"Darkling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the infamy of the situation. The Impostor had been secretly watching us. He had envied us our happiness. Into his degenerate mind had stolen the darkling and criminal thought that he—Audacious Scoundrel—might impose upon me by pretending he was not merely "a robin" but "The Robin"—Tweetie himself and that he might supplant him in my affections. ...
— My Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... were a good mile behind me. The sun had already sunk over the crest of the cliffs, and I could just see the mounted savages through the darkling gloom—still fallowing as fast as their horses could gallop. In five minutes after, I had entered the gorge. The twilight continued no longer: in the canon it was night. I followed the stream upwards, keeping along near the bank. Thick darkness ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... good name: he never wronged his bride. I know the tale. An angry gust of wind Puffed out his torch among the myriad-roomed And many-corridored complexities Of Arthur's palace: then he found a door, And darkling felt the sculptured ornament That wreathen round it made it seem his own; And wearied out made for the couch and slept, A stainless man beside a stainless maid; And either slept, nor knew of other there; Till the high dawn piercing the royal rose In Arthur's casement glimmered ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... and flinging a wet orange gleam to the west, a tumble of creamy foam about her to her rolling, shadows like the passage of phantom hands hurrying over her sails to the swaying of her masts, and the swelling sea darkling from ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... The darkling day that gave its bloodred birth To Milton's white republic undefiled That might endure so few fleet years on earth Bore in him likewise as divine a child; But born not less for crowns of love and mirth, Of palm and myrtle passionate and mild, The leaf that ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... who midst the leafy bower Has, in her nest, sat darkling through the night, With her sweet brood, impatient to descry Their wished looks, and to bring home their food, In the fond quest unconscious of her toil: She, of the time prevenient, on the spray, That overhangs their ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... ears With harmonies of wind and wave and wood —Of winds which tell of waters, and of waters Betraying the close kisses of the wind— And win him unto me: and few there be So gross of heart who have not felt and known A higher than they see: They with dim eyes Behold me darkling. Lo! I have given thee To understand my presence, and to feel My fullness; I have fill'd thy lips with power. I have rais'd thee higher to the Spheres of Heaven, Man's first, last home: and thou with ravish'd sense Listenest ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... mud the darkling fishes grope. Cautious to stir, staring with jewel eyes; Dogs of the sea, the savage congers mope, Winding their sulky ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... gurgled and chuckled as my gondola lurched off and gave way to another; and when I got to my box—a box was two florins, but I could afford it—I looked down on just this scene, over a pit full of Austrian officers and soldiers, and round on a few Venetians darkling in the other boxes and half-heartedly enjoying the music. It was the most hopeless hour of the Austrian occupation, and the air was heavy with its oppression and tobacco, for the officers smoked between the ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... clearer through the density Of darkling woods, do I behold The intervening flecks of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... appreciated by many liberals. Patience, ob- servation, intellectual culture, reading, writing, exten- sive travel, and twenty years in the pulpit, have equipped him as a critic who knows whereof he speaks. His allu- sion to Christian Science in the following paragraph, [15] glows in the shadow of darkling criticism like a mid- night sun. Its manly honesty follows like a benediction after prayer, and closes the task of talking to deaf ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... of the woods,—food, food, food; and it is the cry of civilization as well. There is no dingle dell, where the harebell and the anemone grow, where the pine and the spruce stand darkling and sweet peace seems to fold her wings and sit brooding, but danger is there. Danger that crawls and creeps and runs with great bounds. Danger upon velvety paws, that fall on the mosses of the forest carpet as lightly as an autumn leaf; danger that slinks ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... crop and herd! sleep, darkling thorpe and croft, Safe from the weather! 30 He, whom we convoy to his grave aloft, Singing together, He was a man born with thy face ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... breath,— Vile japes that dam all struck with dust! Erelong unholy fugitives roam 'Mid imbosk caves and moaning dales To piercing screes of purple gloom, Where gurgling sighs and rasping moans,— Each bloody vampyre's home of loam As life-tides drip to scarlet vales,— Unshadowed haunts of darkling Doom! Add terror to the rasping groans That roaring surfs of rubic blood Fling to each afrite's acrid crypt. And mildewed skulls and ashen bones That lie before each pillared mount, Speak tidings of a leprous flood. And where giants' carcants ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... sooner had the beams of the sun vanished from the broad horizon, than a small, gentle rain began to fall, and the light as well as brightness of the day became obscured by darkling clouds. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... mountains. Big green peaks across which hung a bluish haze showed themselves between the hills. The latter were more precipitous; and the brush had now given way to pines of better size and quality than those seen lower down. The river foamed over rapids or ran darkling in pools and stretches. Along the roadside, rarely, we came upon rough-looking log cabins, or shacks of canvas, or tents. The owners were not at home. We thought them miners; but in the light of subsequent knowledge I believe that ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... now on me thou shouldst indeed see wondrous things * That would efface all sorrows and disperse all sores of sprite:' Then deigned our Caliph's Bride to cry, 'Where is that dress of thine?' * And I replied, 'In house of him kept darkling as the night.' So down upon it pounced Masrr and brought it unto her, * And when 'twas there each feather cast a ray of beaming light: Therewith I took it from his hand and opened it straightway * ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... half bird And all a wonder and a wild desire,— Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun, Took sanctuary within the holier blue, And sang a kindred soul out to his face,— Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart— When the first summons from the darkling earth Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue, And bared them of the glory—to drop down, To toil for man, to suffer or to die,— This is the same voice: can thy soul know change Hail then, and hearken from ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... turns he knitted himself to his foe. The wind now acting on the sails of the Serapis forced her, heel and point, her entire length, cheek by jowl, alongside the Richard. The projecting cannon scraped; the yards interlocked; but the hulls did not touch. A long lane of darkling water lay wedged between, like that narrow canal in Venice which dozes between two shadowy piles, and high in air is secretly crossed by the Bridge of Sighs. But where the six yard-arms reciprocally arched overhead, ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... its master's flying Touched by some few moons first the darkling goal Where shades rose up to greet the ...
— A Century of Roundels • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... along the vale, To keep her tryst with Ulnor's lord; A warrior clad in coat of mail Stood darkling by the ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... splendor of the mid-day sun; for the dance and flurry of leafy shadows on the sward; for stilly wayside pools whose waters, deep and dark in the shade of overhanging boughs, are yet dappled here and there with glory; for merry brooks leaping and laughing along their stony beds; for darkling copse and sunny upland,—oho! for youth and life and the ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... her father to her good-naturedly; and went into the gallery, giving an arm to his lady. They passed thence through the music-gallery, long since dismantled, and Queen Elizabeth's rooms, in the clock-tower, and out into the terrace, where was a fine prospect of sunset, and the great darkling woods with a cloud of rooks returning; and the plain and river with Castlewood village beyond, and purple hills beautiful to look at—and the little heir of Castlewood, a child of two years old, was already here on the terrace in his nurse's arms, from whom he ran across the grass instantly ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... are visible to us for a moment, when their orbit passes into the lighted heavens, and then they disappear in the shadow of the earth. But astronomers tell us that they are always there though to us they seem to blaze but for a moment. We cannot see them, but they move on their darkling path and have a sun round which they circle. So be sure that in many heathen lands there are believing souls, seen by us but for an instant and then lost, who yet fill their unseen place, and move obedient round ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... expected, for offering to the public a short sketch of the life of John Hodgkinson—a man, who, though dropped, at his birth, a darkling, into the world, contrived by the exercise of his personal endowments, without aid, friend, influence, or advantage, save those which nature in her bounty vouchsafed him, to mount to the highest rank in his profession—a profession ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... combination of white and crimson between the gleaming surfaces of dark wood; and the whole room had an air of splendour with marble consoles, gilt carvings, long mirrors and a sumptuous Venetian lustre depending from the ceiling: a darkling mass of icy pendants catching a spark here and there from the candles of an eight-branched candelabra standing on a little table near the head of a sofa which had been dragged round to face the fireplace. The faintest possible whiff ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... his regret that he could not accept her very generous offer for St. Johnswort because the place was already sold. He had the taste to forbear any allusion to the motives which (she told Hewson) she had said prompted her offer; but then he became very darkling and sinuous in a suggestion that if Miss Hernshaw wished to have her offer known as hers to the purchaser of St. Johnswort he would be happy to notify him ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... man.... There!" McLean at last withheld his hand from its handiwork. "Jock, you're a grand sight," he pronounced with a special Scottish burr. "If ye dinna win her now—'Bonny Charley's now awa,'" he sung as Ryder, with a last darkling look at his vivid image, strode towards ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars Did wander darkling in the eternal space, Rayless, and pathless, and the icy Earth Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day, And men forgot their passions in the dread Of this their desolation; and all hearts Were chilled into a selfish prayer for light: ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... The cold, steely, darkling sweep of desert had been transformed. It was now a world of red earth and gold rocks and purple sage, with everywhere the endless straggling green cedars. A breeze whipped in, making the fire roar softly. The sun ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... High 'mid the rocks, where her clear waters lave The circling, gloomy basin.—In such scene, Silent, sequester'd, few demand, I ween, That last perfection Phidian chisels gave. Dimly the soft and musing Form is seen In the hush'd, shelly, shadowy, lone concave.— As sleeps her pure, tho' darkling fountain there, I love to recollect her, stretch'd supine Upon its mossy brink, with pendent hair, As dripping o'er the flood.—Ah! well combine Such gentle graces, modest, pensive, fair, To aid the magic ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... To Molus as a hospitable pledge; He gave it to Meriones his son, And now it guarded shrewd Ulysses' brows. 320 Both clad in arms terrific, forth they sped, Leaving their fellow Chiefs, and as they went A heron, by command of Pallas, flew Close on the right beside them; darkling they Discern'd him not, but heard his clanging plumes.[11] 325 Ulysses in the favorable sign Exulted, and Minerva thus invoked.[12] Oh hear me, daughter of Jove AEgis-arm'd! My present helper in all straits, whose eye Marks all ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... if there never had been such a day. I look at the sky as we drive along to the station. Call it sapphire, turquoise—indeed! What dull stone that ever lived darkling in a mine is fit to be named even in metaphor with this pale yet brilliant arch that so softly leans above us? It seems to me as if all the people we meet were handsome and well-featured—as if the Elbe were ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... as farthest skies That hold horizon rain; Or when, steel-darkling, stoic-wise, They ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... to Hilary's smile. Among them was Sam Gibbs, secretly bearing home the battery's colors wrapped round him next his scarred and cross-scarred body. And so, farewell Mobile. Hour by hour through the beautiful blue day, island after island, darkling green or glistering white, rose into view, drifted by between the steamer and the blue Gulf and sunk into the deep; Petit Bois, Horn Island, Ship Island, Cat Island. Now past Round Island, up Lake Borgne and through the Rigolets they swept into Pontchartrain, and near the day's close saw the tide-low, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... dangerous, and fatal; and if it be possible to devise means of freeing ourselves from it, we ought at once to set about the employing of those means. It would be the most wretched and imbecile fatuity, to shut our eyes to the impending dangers and horrors, and "drive darkling down the current of our fate," till we are overwhelmed in the final destruction. If we are tyrants, cruel, unjust, oppressive, let us humble ourselves and repent in the sight of heaven, that the foul stain may be ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... went, grilling him with eyes. Newcomers received the story of the crime in darkling whispers; and the outcast sat and sat and sat, and squirmed and squirmed and squirmed. (He did one or two things with his spine which a professional contortionist would have observed with real interest.) And all this while of freezing suspense was but the criminal's detention awaiting trial. ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... her sitting there, the breeze blowing tendrils of bright hair about her face, her strong, lithe hands clasped youthfully about her knees, her beautiful eyes darkling or brightening with the thoughts that passed, could not have connected her with the mere ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... announced it; The very demons shriek it from their caves; The scroll[151] of Enoch prophesied it long In silent books, which, in their silence, say More to the mind than thunder to the ear: And yet men listened not, nor listen; but Walk darkling to their doom: which, though so nigh, Shakes them no more in their dim disbelief, 280 Than their last cries shall shake the Almighty purpose, Or deaf obedient Ocean, which fulfils it. No sign yet hangs its banner in the air; The ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... has ever been artificial. Many customs, many dresses, many works of art are branded with artificiality because they exhibit vanity and self-consciousness: as if vanity were not a deep and elemental thing, like love and hate and the fear of death. Vanity may be found in darkling deserts, in the hermit and in the wild beasts that crawl around him. It may be good or evil, but assuredly it is not artificial: vanity is a voice ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... sliding resistance. Here, as much as in the natural phenomenon, our reason finds it difficult to acknowledge that the surface gleaming in a whitish sheen should be the one which ordinarily appears as darkling blue, and that the one disappearing into darkness should be the surface which normally ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... spot, or that the humour of silence that seized her before may again return. No, I will not, to save being thought a fool, neglect the course she points out. Many of her class set out by being impostors and end by becoming enthusiasts, or hold a kind of darkling conduct between both lines, unconscious almost when they are cheating themselves or when imposing on others. Well, my course is a plain one at any rate; and if my efforts are fruitless, it shall not be owing to over-jealousy of my ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... other hand, Montigny and Thevenin Pensete played a game of chance. About the first there clung some flavour of good birth and training, as about a fallen angel; something long, lithe, and courtly in the person; something aquiline and darkling in the face. Thevenin, poor soul, was in great feather; he had done a good stroke of knavery that afternoon in the Faubourg St. Jacques, and all night he had been gaining from Montigny. A flat smile illuminated his face; his bald head shone rosily in a garland of red curls; his ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... to me the coming forth of stars! After the trivial tumults of the day They fill the heavens, they hush the earth with awe, And when my life is fretted pettily With transient nothings, it is good, I deem, From darkling windows to look forth and gaze At this new blossoming of Eternity, 'Twixt each To-morrow, and each dead To-day; Or else, with solemn footsteps modulate To spheral music, wander forth and know Their radiant individualities, And feel their presence newly, hear again ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... in nearly the whole of the growing season dodging one another through the close twigged manzanita, lilac, laurel and mahogany that broke upward along the shining bouldered coasts of San Jacinto. the chaparral at this season took all the changes of the incoming surf, blue in the shadows, darkling green about the heads of the gulches, or riffling with the white under side of wind-lifted leaves. Once its murmurous swell had closed over them, the mule-deer would have his own way with the Pot Hunter. Often ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... that hover where honey brims over From sycamore blossoms, or settle or sleep; You glowworms, shine out, and the pathway discover To him that comes darkling along the rough steep. Ah, my sailor, make haste, For the time runs to waste, And my love ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... of Little Malikand might know the crime, and cast the body into the water-course that flows to the Kabul river. Dray wara yow dee! Dray wara yow dee! The body without the head, the soul without light, and my own darkling heart—all three are ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... little thing: she will be getting ridiculous notions into her head;" and aunt Dora went out of the shop with great solemnity, quite unaware that she had done more to put ridiculous notions into Rosa's head than could have got there by means of a dozen darkling walks by the side of the majestic Curate, who never paid her any compliments. Miss Dora went away more than ever convinced in her mind that Frank had forgotten himself and his position, and everything that was fit and seemly. She jumped to a hundred ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... they reached the little town, but the west was blood-red above the ridge, with the moor all darkling purple. ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... the dappled deer are browsing; of the terraces gleaming with statues, and bright with a hundred thousand flowers; of the bridges and shining fountains and rivers wherein the castle windows reflect their festive gleams, when the halls are filled with happy feasters, and over the darkling woods comes the sound of music;—always, I say, when I think of Castle Bluebeard:—it is to think of that dark little closet, which I know is there, and which the lordly owner opens shuddering—after midnight—when he is sleepless and must go unlock ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... made an opaque belt of shadow on the darkling glassy shimmer of the sea. But I saw at once something elongated and pale floating very close to the ladder. Before I could form a guess a faint flash of phosphorescent light, which seemed to issue suddenly from the naked body of a man, flickered in the sleeping water with the elusive, silent play ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Flaccilla, to you, my father and mother, Here I commend this child, once my delight and my pet, So may the darkling shades and deep-mouthed baying of hellhound Touch not with horror of dread little Erotion dear. Now was her sixth year ending, and melting the snows of the winter, Only a brief six days lacked to the tale of the years. Young, amid dull old ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... I waited, darkling, till the dawn Should touch me into bloom, While all my being panted To outpour its first perfume, When, lo! a paler flower than mine ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... be hailed and honoured as its queen." And so he rambled on with his rough and trivial flattery, his foully pimpled face within a foot of hers, and she shrinking before him, very white and mute and frightened. Her father looked on with darkling brows, and Giuliana began to gnaw her lip and look less lazy, whilst in the courtly background there was a respectful murmuring babble, supplying a sycophantic chorus to ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... enchantment, so suddenly and so strangely did the fires shoot forth. As the beacon flame increased, it lighted up the whole of the extensive table-land on the summit of Pendle Hill; and a long lurid streak fell on the darkling moss-pool near which the wizard had stood. But when it attained its utmost height, it revealed the depths of the forest below, and a red reflection, here and there, marked the course of Pendle Water. The excitement of the abbot and his companions momently increased, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... dust-laden atmosphere that was gray oppression through the day became at sundown a mystery of deep translucent colors, of blues and purples, of somber and vivid reds, of strange bright clearnesses of green and yellow athwart the darkling sky. Each upstart furnace, when its monarch sun had gone, crowned itself with flames, the dark cinder heaps began to glow with quivering fires, and each pot-bank squatted rebellious in a volcanic coronet of light. The empire of the day ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... she, "stay you here and pursue your education. I will go in your place. For Marcella Cuciniera must be relieved." She rose, and moved towards the darkling ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... days, under the darkling glance of Mrs. Pett, she had altered the arrangements of the house. Flowers appeared on the meal-table, knives and forks were properly cleaned, and plates no longer appeared ornamented with the mustard ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... believe, he knows, sees all is well; How God had stayed his will and shaped his way, To bring the light to those that darkling dwell With gains that ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... frosts With pleasant wines, and crackling blaze of wood; Me lonely sitting, nor the glimmering light Of make-weight candle, nor the joyous talk Of loving friend, delights; distressed, forlorn, Amidst the horrors of the tedious night, Darkling I sigh, and feed with dismal thoughts My anxious mind; or sometimes mournful verse Indite, and sing of groves and myrtle shades, Or desperate lady near a purling stream, Or lover pendent on a willow-tree. Meanwhile I labour ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the lonely spouse: She on high Albyn's dusky hills may raise The tearful eye in melancholy gaze, Or view, while shadowy auguries disclose The Highland seer's anticipated woes, The bleeding phantom of each martial form Dim in the cloud, or darkling in the storm; While sad, she chants the solitary song, The soft lament for him who tarries long— For him, whose distant relics vainly crave The coronach's wild requiem to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... had smoked out his pipe, and when the bats were abroad, curiosity dominated his complex hesitations, and he stole back into his darkling sitting-room. He paused in the doorway. The stranger was still in the same attitude, dark against the window. Save for the singing of some sailors aboard one of the little slate-carrying ships in the harbour the evening was very still. Outside, the spikes of monkshood ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... night: 'Heaven guide the traveller's fearful steps aright! 'Now from the woods, mistrustful and sharp-ey'd, 'The Fox in silent darkness seems to glide, 'Stealing around us, list'ning as he goes, 'If chance the Cock or stamm'ring cockerel crows, 'Or Goose, or nodding Duck, should darkling cry, 'As if appriz'd of lurking danger nigh: 'Destruction waits them, Giles, if e'er you fail 'To bolt their doors against the driving gale. 'Strew'd you (still mindful of the unshelter'd head) 'Burdens of straw, the cattle's welcome bed? 'Thine heart ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... the night, up sprang the breeze, And all the darkling hours they plied, Nor dreamt but each the selfsame seas By each ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... day, this day in the pine woods. Diane had forded shallow streams and followed bright-winged birds, lunched by a silver lake set coolly in the darkling shade of cypress and found a curious nest in the stump of a tree. Now with a mass of creeping blackberry and violets strapped to her saddle she was riding slowly ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... the fountain cease to play, Dew must glitter near the brink, Though the weary mind decay, As of old it thought so must it think. Leave alone the darkling eyes Fixed upon the moving skies, Cross the hands upon the bosom, there to rise To the throb of the faith ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... thy darkling vale May not unseemly with its stillness suit, As musing slow, I hail ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... not what it means: And I was fearful even of clouds that drive Across the dawn, and die—of all, of nought - Winds whispering on the darkling ways of thought, Sunbeams that flash like fire, and hopes like fears That slay themselves, and live again, and die. But in mine eyes thy light is, in mine ears Thy music: I am thine, and more than I, Being ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... several adjectives that are not used in prose, or are used but seldom; as, azure, blithe, boon, dank, darkling, darksome, doughty, dun, fell, rife, rapt, rueful, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... lukewarm and conforming souls Mrs. Nitschkan cast a darkling eye. It was the recalcitrant, the defiant, the professing sinner upon whom she concentrated ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... my grave When I am dead. 'Twill softly shed its beaming rays, To guide the soul its darkling ways; And ever, as the day's full light Goes down and leaves the world in night, These kindly gleams, with warmth possest, Shall show my spirit where to rest When ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... Like darkling birds her eyelashes Upon her cheek lay fluttering light. Her kirtle's swinging cadences Displayed ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... the bird, who 'mid the leafy bower Has, in her nest, sat darkling through the night With her sweet brood; impatient to descry Their wished looks, and to bring home their food, In the fond quest, unconscious ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... further ceremony. As they walked through the hall and down the corridors side by side, an imaginative person might have felt that perhaps the eyes of an ancient darkling portrait or so looked down at the pair curiously: the long, loosely built New Yorker rather slouching along by the soldierly, almost romantic figure which, in a measure, suggested that others not unlike it might have trod the same oaken floor, wearing ruff and doublet, or lace jabot ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... imprison her sad gaze, All still the sky and darkling drearily; She feels the chilly breath of dear, dead days Come sifting through the ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... level of the counter, bundles of papers shot continuously, and were snatched up by servers, who distributed them in smaller bundles to the hungry boys; who flung down metal discs in exchange and fled, fled madly as though fiends were after them, through a third door, out of the pandemonium into the darkling street. And unceasingly the green papers appeared at the hole in the wall and unceasingly they were plucked away and borne off by those maddened children, whose destination was apparently Aix or Ghent, and whose ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... when darkness fills The dismal days with darkling ills, Rest in the calm the promise gives, That Christ, ...
— Hymns from the East - Being Centos and Suggestions from the Office Books of the - Holy Eastern Church • John Brownlie
... the house of Knollys. Its driver was muffled in such fashion that he could hardly have been known. There stepped from the house the cloaked figure of a woman, who entered the carriage and herself pulled shut the door. The vehicle was soon lost among the darkling streets. ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... softly from the floor, and moved toward the door. She passed the looking-glass on the dressing-table as she went, and cast a darkling glance into it. A haggard ghost seemed to stare back at her, with crazy eyes. A braid of brown, silky hair had become loosened, and was creeping down upon the ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... shade, spread a shade, cast a shadow, cast a gloom, throw a shadow, spread a shadow, cast gloom, throw gloom, spread gloom. extinguish; put out, blow out, snuff out; doubt. turn out the lights, douse the lights, dim the lights, turn off the lights, switch off the lights. Adj. dark, darksome^, darkling; obscure, tenebrious^, sombrous^, pitch dark, pitchy, pitch black; caliginous^; black &c (in color) 431. sunless, lightless &c (sun) (light), &c 423; somber, dusky; unilluminated &c (illuminate) &c 420 [Obs.]; nocturnal; dingy, lurid, gloomy; murky, murksome^; shady, umbrageous; overcast &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... passing breeze, revealed its full breadth with crystalline distinctness. Between sky and water there stretched across the picture a broad, looming, dimly-defined band of shadow, marked here and there at the top by little slanting patches of an intensely glowing white. He looked at this darkling middle distance for a moment or two without comprehension. Then he turned and hurriedly moved to the door of Julia's ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... thrice welcome, the auspicious day, When from the mountain where he darkling lay, The Polish sun into the firmament Sprung all the brighter for his late ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... Mountain rill, that darkling, sparkling, Winds and wanders down the hill, 'Mid the rushes, whispering, murmuring, Oh that I were ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... are climbing, Crabs from the great sea, Sea that is darkling. Black crabs and gray crabs 5 Scuttle o'er the reef-plate. Billows are tumbling and lashing, Beating and surging nigh. Seashells are crawling up; And lurking in holes 10 Are the eels o-u and o-i. But taste the moss akahakaha, Kahiki! how the ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... shaky voice, after an interval of gulping, though she was unable to lift her eyes, and the darkling lids continued to veil them. She spoke hurriedly, like an ungifted child reciting something committed to memory, but her sincerity was none the less ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... are trod of none Where through the woods they went astray; The spider's traceries are spun Across the darkling forest way; There come no Knights that ride to slay, No Pilgrims through the grasses wet, No shepherd lads that sang their say ...
— Aucassin and Nicolete • Andrew Lang
... which parched and festered and engendered all corruption in the land on which it looked. This crowd was in a city, a city on whose flat roofs the myrtle and the cistus bloomed; above whose walls the plumes of olives waved; upon whose distant slopes the darkling cedar groves rose straight against the sky, and on whose lofty temple plates of gold glistened against the shining heavens. This crowd had scourges, and stones, and goads in their hands; and in their midst ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... no roses darkling, No stately hollyhocks dim; She is only thinking and dreaming Of the garden, the ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... burrow like a wild beast, his heart full of malignancy against the whole race which had cast him out. It needed but this to complete the grim suggestiveness of the barren waste, the chilling wind, and the darkling sky. Even Baskerville fell silent and pulled his overcoat more closely ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... window. The market-place of Paimpol, hedged in on all sides by the old-fashioned houses, became sadder and sadder with the darkling; everywhere reigned silence. Above the housetops the still brilliant space of the heavens seemed to grow more hollow, to raise itself up and finally separate itself from all terrestrial things: these, in the last hour of day, were entirely blended into the single dark outline of the gables ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... owl, which had passed the daylight in some obscure corner, launched darkling forth on the air and winged hither and thither,—once or twice fanning the sleeper's face with silent pinions. The crocodile lazily edged off the stone, plumped quietly into the water, and clambered up the hither margin of the pool, there coming to another long pause. A snail, making a night-journey ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... remorse, her afterthoughts of perplexity had been lulled in the long calm of the respite, and when roused again, even by this sudden sorrow, she woke to her old trust and hope. And when she listened to the expressive though calm rehearsal of that solemn sunrise-greeting to the weary darkling fishers on the shore of the mountain lake, it was to her as if the form so long hidden from her by mists of her own raising, once more shone forth, smoothing the vexed waters of her soul, and she could say with a new thrill of recognition, "It is ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from her turret bower, Her plaintive notes each night, In seamen's ears. Their hearts sank deep. They long had watched her white And care-worn cheeks; but now they knew her fears And wept with her to see the darkling storm-clouds lower. ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... the end of my pilgrimage, wearied but tranquil, assured of rest and welcome. The freshness and blithe eagerness of the morning are over, the solid hours of sturdy progress are gone, the heat of the day is past, and only the gentle descent among the shadows remains, with cool airs blowing from darkling thickets, laden with woodland scents, and the rich fragrance of rushy dingles. Ere the night falls the wayfarer will push the familiar gate open, and see the lamplit windows of home, with the dark chimneys and gables outlined against the green sky. Those that love him are awaiting ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... is a forgotten streak of day That trembles through the hemlocks' darkling bars, And still, my heart, still some divine delay Upon the threshold holds the ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... as he sprang off the thwart and resumed his task of baling with renewed zest. "Nevertheless," he continued, "it will be well to keep her afloat as long as we may, since she affords a bigger mark to steer for than would the heads of us two afloat upon the darkling water." ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... seest, what saying was this of thine, God, that thy power has breathed into my lips? 280 For from no sunlit shrine darkling it came. ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... in Fate, So were I equal'd with them in renown, Blind Thamyris and blind Maeonides, And Tiresias and Phineus Prophets old. Then feed on thoughts, that voluntarie move Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful Bird Sings darkling, and in shadiest Covert hid Tunes her nocturnal Note. Thus with the Year 40 Seasons return, but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of Ev'n or Morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or Summers Rose, Or ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... the other worlds wandered. Then the yellow moon came from her palace, wrapping herself at first with a mantle of golden mist, as if—Godiva-like—she shrank from loosening her garments; but the need of the darkling earth pressed upon her, and she dropped her covering and ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... latest hour cometh and the ending of the strife; And to-morrow and to-morrow shall we take the hand of life, And wend adown the meadows, and skirt the darkling wood, And reap the waving acres, and gather in the good. I see a wall before me built up of steel and fire, And hurts and heart-sick striving, and the war-wright's fierce desire; But there-amidst a door is, and windows are therein; ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... splendor against the black water. Mysterious, couchant, straining, the bulwarked city rode the waves; a mighty ship, her funnels the great buildings beyond, where sullen streamers of smoke trailed motionless and darkling; the indescribable, multitudinous hum of the city's blended voices for purring of monster engines, deep in her hold; bold and high, her restless prow swung seaward in majestic curve, impatient to beat ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... man stood looking down darkling upon the girl. He would have given his soul if he could have clasped that slender form in his arms! A sudden impulse assailed him, and bade him fall upon his knees before her, and ask her forgiveness and guidance. She stood ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... why Grewgious was on the spot. I venture to think it not inconceivable that Mr. Grewgious having come down to Cloisterham by a late train, on Christmas Eve, to keep his Christmas appointment with Rosa, paid a darkling visit to the tomb of his lost love, Rosa's mother. Grewgious was very sentimental, but too secretive to pay such a visit by daylight. "A night of memories and sighs" he might "consecrate" to his lost lady love, as Landor did to Rose Aylmer. Grewgious was to have helped ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... of Symonds; and, if he meant fairly by me and mine, he was certain to advise the latter of his return: so I resolved to push straight on for my old quarters. Between me and the wished for gite there lay sixteen miles of hilly road—darkling every minute faster. ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... clear, colourless, grey overhead; the dock like a sheet of darkling glass crowded with upside-down reflections of warehouses, of hulls and masts of silent ships. Rare figures moved here and there on the distant quays. A knot of men stood alongside with clothes-bags and ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... well! Like a fairy silver bell In the distance ringing, Lightly swinging In the air; 'Tis the water in the dell Where the elfin minstrels dwell, Falling in a rainbow sprinkle, Dropping stars that brightly twinkle, Bright and fair, On the darkling pool below, Making music so; 'Tis the water elves who play On their lutes of spray. Tinkle, tinkle! Like a fairy silver bell; Like a pebble in a shell; Tinkle, tinkle! ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... store and dwelling of Dr. Pelliter, and was on the outskirts of the village. The shadow of the western range had now slipped across the valley and nearly climbed the opposite wall; lavender scarfs of mist veiled the far, jumbled peaks in the darkling rift; slim, swaying columns of smoke from the clustered chimneys of Greenstream towered dizzily through the shaded air to where, high above, they were transformed to gold by the last, up-flung ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... enough To wake and wander all the dark night through.— But what hath brought thee forth, before the sun Is up? What seek'st thou in this darkling hour? ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Note-Books, Vol. I.] how the life wore upon him; and his journal apparently ceased during the whole bucolic experience. How joyously his mind begins to disport itself again with fancies, the moment he leaves the association, even temporarily! And in 1842, as soon as he is fairly quit of it, the old darkling or waywardly gleaming stream of thought and imagination flows freshly, untamably forward. Hawthorne remained with the Brook Farm community nearly a twelvemonth, a small part of which time was spent in Boston. Some of the letters which ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... often I desire to look upon it again; and the choice of a point of view is easy to me. It should be at a certain water-door, embowered in shrubbery. The river is there dammed back for the service of the flour-mill just below, so that it lies deep and darkling, and the sand slopes into brown obscurity with a glint of gold; and it has but newly been recruited by the borrowings of the snuff-mill just above, and these, tumbling merrily in, shake the pool to its black heart, fill it with drowsy eddies, and set the curded froth ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... little as the world I should foreknow Up into which I was about to rise— Its rains, its radiance, airs, and warmth, and skies, How it would greet me, how its wind would blow— As little, it may be, I do know the good Which I for years half darkling have pursued— The second birth for which ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald |
