"Sightless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... asylum for the blind was erected in Massachusetts, the committee decided to save expense by not having any windows. They reasoned that, as the patients could not see, there was no need of any light. It was built without windows, but ventilation was well provided for, and the poor sightless patients were domiciled in the house. But things did not go well: one after another began to sicken, and great languor fell upon them; they felt distressed and restless, craving something, they hardly knew what. After two had died and all were ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... hit, Jimmy?" gasped an honest Irish lad, as he strove to raise him from the ground. But deathly pallor and staring, sightless eyes were the sole reply. "My God, lieutenant, he's killed outright. There's no use staying," cried another trooper. "Mount, sir, mount for God's sake! They'll be on us in a minute." But tugging still at the limp and lifeless form, Davies did not seem to hear. The fierce ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... surprisingly short time, the blind adult becomes accustomed to the new conditions, the various organs perform their new functions, and he finds life in sightless land to be, in many respects, very like life in that world of light and color, now only a memory. But a very living memory—enabling him to recall the faces of his friends, the glow of sunset, or the rosy light ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... down low as the hawk swooped for fish; Arthur sprang upon its back; the owl darted at the creature's eyes, and with a furious blow, first at one then at the other, made her enemy sightless. The hawk, with a cry of pain, fell into the water. Instantly an enormous fish dragged him beneath, and it was only by wonderful dexterity on the part of the owl and of the frog that the latter was unhurt. He nestled once ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... mother is dying she knows full well, and how she longs for one loving glance, for one word of affection, to carry with her in the lonely years to come. But no look of recognition comes to the sightless eyes and no word escapes the lips save that never ceasing cry of "Richard, Richard, Richard." A white-capped nurse flits softly about, but Jane pays no heed to her. The doctor enters and hold whispered consultation with the nurse. Jane ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, as heaven's cherubim Hors'd upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, That tears shall drown the wind."—Shak., Macbeth, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... of the World fare forth (Oh, listen ye! Ah, listen ye!), East and West, and South and North, Shuttles weaving back and forth Amid the warp! (Oh, listen ye!) Can sightless touch—can vision keen Hunt where the Winds of the World have been And searching, learn what rumors mean? (Nay, ye who are wise! Nay, listen ye!) When tracks are crossed and scent is stale, 'Tis fools who shout—the fast who fail! ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... may bathe his coal-black wings in mire, And unperceived fly with the filth away; But if the like the snow-white swan desire, The stain upon his silver down will stay. Poor grooms are sightless night, kings glorious day: Gnats are unnoted wheresoe'er they fly, But eagles ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... of such despair, All living things give room, They flit before his sightless glare As horrid shapes, that loom And shriek the curse that bids him bear The symbol of ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... from Manila. Ship after ship came in, or was towed in, with fighting force sightless, and the work being done by the "black gang" or the idlers, and each with the same report—the gradual dimming of lights and outlines as the night went on, resulting in partial or total blindness by sunrise. And now it was remarked that those who escaped ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... Sightless and strong oblivion in utter life takes possession of me! The unknown, strong current of life supreme drowns me and sweeps me away and holds me down to the sources of mystery, in the depths, extinguishes there ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence
... in the legislatur'. Look at him—look at him! He's got FOUR eyes! Look at his hair—hit's PARTED IN THE MIDDLE!" There was a storm of laughter—Uncle Josh had made good—and if the Hon. Samuel could straightway have turned bald-headed and sightless, he would have been a happy man. He looked sick with hopelessness, but Uncle Tommie Hendricks, his mentor, was vigorously whispering something in his ear, and gradually his face cleared. Indeed, the Hon. Samuel was ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.
... the Fourth Book of the immortal poem of your Blind Bard, (to whose sightless orbs no doubt Glorious Shapes were apparent, and Visions Celestial,) how Adam discourses to Eve of the Bright Visitors ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... useless guilt; As though a pupil's hand accurs'd[146]—his holy master's blood had spilt. But not mine own untimely fate—it is not that which I deplore, My blind, my aged parents state—'tis their distress afflicts me more. That sightless pair, for many a day—from me their scanty food have earned, What lot is theirs, when I'm away—to the five elements returned?[147] Alike all wretched they, as I—ah, whose this triple deed of blood? For who the herbs will now supply—the roots, the fruit, their blameless food?' My troubled soul, ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... had ebbed and flowed on the Dedlow Marsh unheeded before the sealed and sightless windows of the "Kingfisher's Nest." Since the young birds had flown to Logport, even the Indian caretakers had abandoned the piled dwelling for their old nomadic haunts in the "bresh." The high spring tide had again made ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... mysteriously sad. It might be that the wonder-child was born to be wrecked, to be cast up, streaming with sea-water on the strand of this lonely isle. It might be that the eyes which worshipped the rainbow were sightless beneath that stone yonder; that the hands which pointed to it were folded in the eternal sleep. And, if so, was not the lie justified? If so, could Peter Uniacke regret it? He saw this man who had come into his lonely life treading ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... closing sentence Miss Quincey's MS. had become a sightless blur. But she had managed to jot down in her neat arithmetical way: "Poets healers ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... one function was the destruction of souls. May we see a relation of the Korrigan and Keridwen in Tridwan, or St Triduana, of Restalrig, near Edinburgh, who presided over a certain well there, and at whose well-shrine offerings were made by sightless pilgrims for ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... ground had wrought odd freaks upon their skins. They more resemble corpses than living beings. Many are deformed, others maimed, while the majority, Thuvia explained, are sightless. ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... same all through the war: the tragedies have been too big for human minds to grasp. It is the little things that tell; the isolated thumb-nail impressions that live in one's mind, and will go with us to the grave. The one huddled form lying motionless in the shell-hole, with its staring, sightless eyes; the one small, but supreme sacrifice: that is the thing which hits—hits harder than the Lusitania, or any other of the gigantic panels of the war. The pin-pricks we feel; the sledge hammer merely stuns. And the danger is that those who have felt the pin-pricks may confuse ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... when, amidst the acclaim Of thousands heralding to heaven his name— Mid all those holier harmonies of fame Which sound along the path of virtuous souls, Like music round a planet as it rolls,— He turns away—coldly, as if some gloom Hung o'er his heart no triumphs can illume;— Some sightless grief upon whose blasted gaze Tho' glory's light may play, in vain it plays. Yes, wretched AZIM! thine is such a grief, Beyond all hope, all terror, all relief! A dark, cold calm, which nothing now can break. ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... the Forty and of the Acolytes is arranged. 'When one of the Forty dies,' replied the Owl, 'which happens only at very long intervals, for they belong to the race of Struldbrugs, several worshippers who have become bald, old, nearly sightless, with other worshippers' still young and strong, are paraded before the Thirty-nine. And they generally choose the old men, or, if not, the young men who come from a strange land in the North, where rain falls always when it is ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... could not be content. It became a regular thing for Vivian to be seen, day after day, in the shipowners' offices, at Lloyd's, at the docks, asking eagerly for news, or, more frequently, turning his sightless eyes and anxious face from one desk to another, as the careless comments of the clerks upon his errand fell upon his ear. Sometimes his secretary came with him: sometimes, but, more seldom, a lady. For Angela was living with him now, and she ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... sound of approach: the closet-door folded back, and in glided, open-eyed, but sightless pale as death, and clad in white, ghostly-pure and saint-like, the Lady Alice. I shuddered from head to foot at what I had done. She was more terrible to me in that moment than any pale-eyed ghost could have been. For had I not exercised a kind of necromantic art, and roused without ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... clawing ceased, the bull raised his gory, sightless head, and with a horrid roar ran headlong across the arena. With great leaps and bounds he came, straight toward the arena wall directly beneath where we sat, and then accident carried him, in one ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... His eyes grow sightless. The dull, little, trivial street has palled upon his view. He sees a crowd gathering at a corner and making demonstrations ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... perhaps more apparent than real. He points out that it is in company that the blind is least conscious of his misfortune, and that the deaf and dumb is most conscious of it. That is certainly the case. In conversation the sightless are on an equality with the seeing, while the deaf and dumb are shut up in a terrible isolation. The fact that they see is not their gain but their loss. They watch the movement of the lips and the signs of laughter, but this only adds to the ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... at a fat, sightless wriggler that came squirming through a seam, squinting unaccustomed eyes along the barrel. There was a violent explosion, and the wriggler disappeared in a smear of dirty green. Gunga nearly fell over backward in fright, and even Forepaugh was shaken. He was surprised that ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... concentration of my views upon one object, gradually brought back my old passion, which at length became as firmly established as it was before. The elasticity of my original feelings being thus restored, I ventured, alone and sightless, upon my dangerous and novel course; and I cannot look back upon the scenes through which I have passed, the great variety of circumstances by which I have been surrounded, and the strange experiences with which I have become familiar, without an intense aspiration ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... cutting Sholto was left whining on the platform, and it was as much as Angus could do to hold him back. Poor Sholto; he was a faithful beast, and they were taking his beloved mistress away from him. Myra sat back in the carriage, and furtively wiped away a tear from her poor sightless eyes. ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... thirty paces of the Military Bureau where he had worn out his life, on a pallet of sacking, in the cell of some expelled Barnabite father. His livid face was sunk in the pillow. His eyes, which already were almost sightless, turned their glassy pupils upon his visitor; his parched hand grasped Evariste's and pressed it with unexpected vigour. Three times he had vomited blood in two days. He tried to speak; his voice, at first hoarse and feeble as a ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... was followed by others, and a stillness fell upon Nature; the birds ceased to sing, the grasshoppers were still, the bees paused. All Nature was listening and the Princess was conscious in her dream that there were others besides herself listening, unseen shapes and sightless phantoms; a crowd, a multitude of attentive ghosts, that were hidden from her sight. The melody rose and swelled in stillness; it was melting and ravishing and bold with a human audacity. As she listened it reminded ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... and the people were all out, when I noticed Anna still in the same position. I went over and called her, and receiving no answer shook her a little, but she never moved. I bent over and raised her head; a pair of sightless eyes seemed to look at me, and I knew she was dead. I never had such a start in my life. Two hours before alive—now dead! I learned that she was from a town in Connecticut, of good parents, who took her to her last resting-place in the family plot—a wayward girl who ran away from home. Her "God ...
— Dave Ranney • Dave Ranney
... the foemen with their broadswords? Sang the heroes with their weapons, Sang the eldest, sang the youngest, Sang the middle-aged, enchanted; Only one he left his senses, He a poor, defenseless shepherd, Old and sightless, halt and wretched, And the old man's name was Nasshut. Spake the miserable shepherd: "Thou hast old and young enchanted, Thou hast banished all our heroes, Why hast spared this wretched shepherd?" This is Lemminkainen's answer: ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... at every stage of their journey. From village to village, ragged boys and girls kept almost under the horses' feet; hoary grandsires and grandames caught glimpses of their approach, and hobbled to intercept them at some point of vantage; blind men stared them out of countenance with their sightless orbs; women held up their unwashed babies; cripples displayed their wooden legs, their grievous scars, their dangling, boneless arms, their broken backs, their burden of a hump, or whatever infirmity or deformity Providence had assigned ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... prophecy. Appalled the astonished conclave sate: With stupid eyes, the men of fate Gazed on the light inspired form, And listened for the avenging storm; The judges felt the victim's dread; No hand was moved, no word was said, Till thus the Abbot's doom was given, Raising his sightless balls to heaven:- "Sister, let thy sorrows cease; Sinful brother, part in peace!" From that dire dungeon, place of doom, Of execution too, and tomb, Paced forth the judges three, Sorrow it were, and shame, to tell The butcher-work that there befell, When they had glided ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... the patient was dying. The physician had just probed the ulcer on the hip, and said the bone was carious 193:6 for several inches. He even showed me the probe, which had on it the evidence of this condition of the bone. The doctor went out. Mr. Clark lay with his eyes fixed and 193:9 sightless. The dew of death was on his brow. I went to his bedside. In a few moments his face changed; its death-pallor gave place to a natural hue. The eyelids 193:12 closed gently and the breathing became natural; he was ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... she had not yet learned to overcome, she directed her once sightless eyes toward him. He stood with Doris clasped in his arms. The mother had not heeded his words of the previous evening, for they bore no hidden meaning to her. A light now broke over her features, while Ralph ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... sulphur, flesh of tow, Bones of dry wood, a soul without a guide To curb the fiery will, the ruffling pride Of fierce desires that from the passions flow; A sightless mind that weak and lame doth go Mid snares and pitfalls scattered far and wide;— What wonder if the first chance brand applied To fuel massed like this should make it glow? Add beauteous art, which, brought with us from heaven, Will conquer nature;—so divine a power ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... mountains the chill knowledge of death wailed through the window, and over the heads of the crowd. All the figures were upright now in the little room. Then those outside saw Laura Sloly lean over and close the sightless eyes. This done, she came to the door and opened it, and motioned for the Healer to leave. He hesitated, hearing the harsh murmur from the outskirts of the crowd. Once again she motioned, and he came. With ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... That upturned sightless white eye of his took possession of my imagination. I don't think that even then I was swayed by any crude melodramatic conception of injustice. I was quite prepared to believe the card wasn't a punctiliously accurate statement of fact, and that a case could be ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... up and down through the long tumult by a woman holding a little saucer to receive contributions. This old man sang, or rather chanted, certain words in a peculiarly long-drawn, guttural manner, throwing back his head, and turning up his sightless eyeballs to the sky. His chant was a lamentation upon his infirmity; and at the time it produced the same effect upon me, that my first reading of Milton's Invocation to the Sun did, years afterward. I can not recall it all; but it ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... three children: two boys, named Guy and Edmund, and Muriel, who, alas! had been born blind. Perhaps on account of her infirmity she had been the pet of her parents; but she was of a gentle nature, and was beautiful to look upon, even with her sightless eyes. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the wolf-man, pricked up against the vaguely lustrous background of the river, fascinated me. For all the world those pointed ears seemed to be listening. But I knew they were dead and dried; that a man's eyes were gazing through the sightless sockets ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... dead man lay on the floor, his dark face twisted up, his sightless eyes staring at the ceiling, his temple crushed as with a hammer. Clutched tight in one stiff hand was an automatic. On his chest was ...
— A Scientist Rises • Desmond Winter Hall
... his opinion of what caused our two stampedes. As he had never worked with the herd, his first question was, did we receive any blind cattle or had any gone blind since we started? He then informed me that the old Spanish rancheros would never leave a sightless animal in a corral with sound ones during the night for fear of a stampede. He cautioned me to look the herd over carefully, and if there was a blind animal found to cut it out or the trouble would he repeated in spite of all precaution. I rode ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... distance away from him, with that tender, sensitive, and penetrating vision, ever on the alert for suffering in any form, had rushed at once to the rescue, comprehending at a glance the situation of the sightless man. To help him to his feet and aid him homeward in the most natural and simple way afforded Dickens such a pleasure as only the ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... ash-tree touched and bound all the worlds together in its wonderful circle of life. One root it sent deep down into the sightless depths of Hel, where the dead lived; another it fastened firmly in Joetunheim, the dreary home of the giants; and with the third it grasped Midgard, the dwelling place of men. Serpents and all kinds of worms gnawed continually at its roots, but were never able ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... overthrow the even fouler demon who would succeed him if he died. Already I knew murder had been done; that the coming morning would reveal some hideous tragedy, on which, perhaps my fate would depend. Somewhere below in the dark lay a dead man, his sightless eyes staring upward. The curse of crime was upon the vessel, and this, possibly, was only the beginning, whose end could not be foreseen. And for what was I there? The answer was not upon my lips, but in my heart—Dorothy ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... derided; justice rebuked; treachery applauded; traitors canonized; anarchy inaugurated; monarchy calculating the end of republicanism; and the wheels of government clogged by the minions of despotism! All this, my Countrymen, and you passive, silent, sightless; reckless of your own and your children's doom? And while all this is true, you go about your usual avocations, as though the eyes of the civilized world were not upon you; as though the great, the good, the magnanimous of all lands were not breathless, ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... of the temple laid His desperate hands, and in its overthrow Destroyed himself, and with him those who made A cruel mockery of his sightless woe; The poor, blind Slave, the scoff and jest of all, Expired, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... this one was chosen to the great office."[4] Thus my Lady, nor yet moved she her look from its fixed attention after than before these words of hers. As is he who gazes and endeavors to see the sun eclipsed a little, who through seeing becomes sightless, so did I become in respect to that last fire, till it was said, "Why dost thou dazzle thyself in order to see a thing which has no place here?[5] On earth my body is earth; and it will be there with the others until our number corresponds with the eternal ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... the pale, worn, but still graceful woman, who, with her sightless eyes cast down, clung to her sole stay—her devoted child—Mrs. Gwynne seemed deeply moved. There was even a sort of deprecatory hesitation in her manner, but it soon passed.—She clasped the widow's hands, and spoke to her in a voice so sweet, ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... Railway will be able to understand the enjoyment which Herbert derived from the bold and romantic scenery visible from the car windows. Mr. Carroll made him take the seat nearest the window, that he might have a better view, and from time to time Herbert described what he saw to his sightless ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... empty of all but a streak of sunshine smeared along the dustless floor, lay a form covered by a sheet. With a huge steady hand the Inspector took the hem and turned it back. A sightless face gazed up at them, and on either side of that sightless defiant face the three Forsytes gazed down; in each one of them the secret emotions, fears, and pity of his own nature rose and fell like the rising, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and went on his wayfare until he entered a city and found him a lodging. When this was done he fell to threading the streets and ways crying aloud the while, "I am the Leach, the Healer![FN446] I am the Mediciner who can cure the blind!" whereat all the one-eyed and the sightless would summon him with outcries and he would apply to them somewhat of his leaves; and after two or three days (he superintending the while) they would open their eyes and see. On this wise went by a term of time until at last the King of that city heard rumour of a new ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... do not remember having heard mention of as remarkable, has nearly every consonantal and vowel sound in the language. Try it by the Greek and by the English alphabet; it is a curiosity. Tell me that old Homer did not roll his sightless eyeballs about with delight, as he thundered out these ringing syllables! It seems hard to think of his going round like a hand-organ man, with such music and such thought as his to earn his bread with. One can't help wishing that Mr. Pugh could have got at him for a single lecture, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... trunks To lie as lie the dead. If hope remains, For me if any hope survives on earth, It rests with thee; thee only!' On her knees She sank in prayer; her fingers in the fount She dipped; then o'er him signed the Saviour's cross, And thrice invoked that Saviour. At her word Behold, that sightless King arose, and saw, And rendered thanks to God. The legend saith Saint Catherine by her stood that night, and spake: 'Once more I greet ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... of a diminutive size, with commonplace features, and a severe, forbidding countenance, made so, perhaps, by intense application to business, together with the unfavorable effect caused by a blemished and sightless eye. ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... the king settled in his chariot beside the standards; for he said he should hope that an army would soon come to grief which trusted in the leading of a blind man. Harald, moreover, he said, had been seized in extreme age with the desire of foreign empire, and was as witless as he was sightless; wealth could not satisfy a man who, if he looked to his years, ought to be well-nigh contented with a grave. The Swedes therefore were bound to fight for their freedom, their country, and their children, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... to read; he, the great walker who loved to ramble alone, could barely grope his way about; all that was left to him of sight was the ability to recognise well-known figures standing in a strong light. Yet he still continued to preach; standing grey and sightless in the pulpit, uttering what words (perforce unstudied) came to his lips. Himself in his sorrowful age and stern endurance a ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... can it be that can recollect that?" was the answer, as she turned the sightless orbs on the speaker. "Ye maun be full o' years. Yes, that was my happy time, even the only happy time I ever ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... Brandon sent Judson's sword flying thirty feet away. The fellow started to run, but turned and fell upon his knees to beg for life. Brandon's reply was a flashing circle of steel, and his sword point cut lengthwise through Judson's eyes and the bridge of his nose, leaving him sightless and hideous for life. A revenge compared to which ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... campaigns under Napoleon himself. The history of another of my old soldiers was pathetic. He was led daily into the cabaret, where my guests were wont to fight their battles o'er again, his eyes absolutely sightless, and his hair as white as snow. Getting into conversation with him I learned that he had gone to Egypt with Bonaparte, had fought at the Battle of the Pyramids, had been blinded by the glaring sun on the sand of the desert, and had been an ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... but, as he gazed, it assumed the outline of a human form—then the features of Mary White, the foster-sister whom he had murdered. The apparition grew still plainer. The ghastly countenance; the fallen lip; the sightless eye, dull and open with a vacant stare; the deep, solemn, mysterious repose which ever accompanies the aspect of death; the deep wound near the heart, from which gushed life's crimson torrent, falling at her feet without a sound—each—all, for one short, passing, fearful, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... him noiselessly and put her hand upon his arm softly. He turned his sightless eyes upon her, evidently without seeing her, and, fighting against the desire to cry out, she led him gently back to ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... on the road, the company, the government, his comrades, even his benefactors, and then thoughtfully demanded drink. There was no longer a stern corporal to forbid, for Connelly, suffering and almost sightless, had been led into a rear coach. But there was no longer money with which to buy, for Foster's last visible cent had gone up in smoke and flame, and, scorched and smarting in a dozen places, wrapped in a blanket in lieu of clothes, the dark-eyed ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... anything requiring an outlay of money Craig accomplished his full purpose of securing an interview with Mr. Haswell. The invalid lay propped up in bed, and as we entered he heard us and turned his sightless eyes in our direction almost as ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... the shimmering wheat that frets the sky, Gold of plenty and blue of hope, I'm seeing it all with an inner eye As out of the door I grope and grope. And I hear my wife and her lover there, Whispering, whispering, round the rick, Mocking me and my sightless stare, As I fumble and stumble everywhere, Slapping and tapping with my stick; Old and weary at thirty-one, Heartsick, wishing it all was done. Oh, I'll tap my way around to the byre, And I'll hear the cows as they chew their hay; There at least there is ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... arrested by art and forced to form a lake with a swannery; but neither lake nor swannery is entirely convincing. It was not, however, its architect's fault that to Parson Chichester the place looked much more stately than homelike, since every window in its really noble facade was shuttered and sightless. ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... goes that a mouse had contracted a sort of friendly sympathy for the hoary-headed, sightless Royal maniac, and paid him such frequent visits, during his long captivity, that it was at length become quite tame, and would submit to be handled by the unfortunate shadow of a great monarch. The King was very much delighted ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... sadness—such childlike innocence; her arms drooping— her face wistfully turned to his—and a half smile upon the lips, that made still more touching the tears not yet dried upon her cheeks. While thin, frail, shadowy, with white hair and furrowed cheeks, the old man fixed his sightless orbs on space; and his face, usually only animated from the lethargy of advancing dotage by a certain querulous cynicism, now grew suddenly earnest, and even thoughtful, as Fanny ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... funeral meeting kotch its breath at them awful words, and sot there rooted and grounded; and she turnt and looked around defiant-like with them sightless eyes, and strode off down the hill, John and ...
— Sight to the Blind • Lucy Furman
... despair he smote his hands together, inadvertently killing his son as he clasped them. Misfortune still followed upon misfortune. The earth opened her mouth and swallowed up the four generations sprung from Cain—Enoch, Irad, Mehujael, and Methushael. Lamech, sightless as he was, could not go home; he had to remain by the side of Cain's corpse and his son's. Toward evening, his wives, seeking him, found him there. When they heard what he had done, they wanted to separate from him, all the more as they knew that whoever was descended from ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... for thou else couldst not believe; Lose, that the lost thou may'st receive; Die, for none other way canst live. When earth and heaven lay down their veil, And that apocalypse turns thee pale; When thy seeing blindeth thee To what thy fellow-mortals see; When their sight to thee is sightless; Their living, death; their light, most light- less; Search no more— Pass the gates of Luthany, ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... an American sailor, with blotched, bleared face, with one eye gone, while over the sunken, sightless cavity he wore a green patch, his face covered by a scraggly beard, and his single eye, small and deep-set, added to the ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... Quite round, a cluster of mere hands and arms, 65 (Thrust in all senses, all ways, from all sides, Only consenting at the branch's end They strain toward) serves for frame to a sole face, The Praiser's, in the center: who with eyes Sightless, so bend they back to light inside 70 His brain where visionary forms throng up, Sings, minding not that palpitating arch Of hands and arms, nor the quick drip of wine From the drenched leaves o'erhead, nor crowns cast off, Violet ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... this ample field Try what the open, what the covert yield: The latent tracts, the giddy heights explore Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar; Eye nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies, And catch the manners ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... With sightless eyes beheld, the wall of Troy, Queen Helen lying in the ivory room, And at her side an amorous red-lipped boy Trimming with dainty hand his helmet's plume, And far away the moil, the shout, the groan, As Hector shielded off the spear and Ajax ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... him / the Dwarf, howe'er he tried. E'en as two wild lions / they coursed the mountainside, Where he the sightless mantle[1] / from Alberich soon won. Then Siegfried, knight undaunted, / held the treasure for ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... at once. She uttered a scream, and fell with her forehead on the horse's neck. Even that movement probably checked him, for he reared, and before his feet touched the ground again I was close to him; with a frantic effort I caught his bridle, and swept his head round. Mariamne fell, voiceless, sightless, and breathless, into my arms. The spot where she was saved was within a single ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... she called out, tremulously. "Who are you?" She turned on him her sightless eyes, a ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... sheoaks and cypresses, like the far-off sea upon a sandy shore. Here, too, came oftener than elsewhere a flock of lories, making the dark low trees gay with flying living blossoms. And here she would lie with her feet towards the east, her sightless eyes towards that dreary ocean which she would never ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... marry, eat strong flesh, and beget strong children—the power of doing all this would pass away with youth, which was terribly transitory. I bethought me that a time would come when my eyes would be bleared, and, perhaps, sightless; my arms and thighs strengthless and sapless; when my teeth would shake in my jaws, even supposing they did not drop out. No going a wooing then—no labouring—no eating strong flesh, and begetting lusty children then; and I bethought me how, when all this should be, I should ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... arms, eyes staring and sightless, The Pilgrim groped out and found the ropes. Once more at the end of the toll he lifted himself—lifted himself by the strength of his shoulders to his legs that tottered beneath him, and then stepped free ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... was sightless. On a fine bright day She saw her lay her needlework aside, And, as on such occasions mothers will, For leaving off her work began ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of light. They say she will probably live, which seems impossible. She looks like a galvanized corpse—yet must have been a good-looking child. Notwithstanding the nature of her wound, her reason has not gone, and as she sat upright in her little bed, with her head bandaged, and her fixed and sightless eyes, she answered meekly and readily to all the questions we put to her. Poor little thing! she was shocking to look at; one of the many innocent beings whose lives are to be rendered sad and joyless by this revolution. The doctor ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... winding slowly out of the little manse loaning. The window-blinds were all down, and their bald whiteness, like sightless eyes looking out of the white-washed walls and the trampled snow, made the Free Church manse of Deeside no cheerful picture that wild New Year's Day. The green gate which had so long hung on one hinge, periodically mended ever since the minister's ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... little shape and a mightless, And the strong men laughed and roared: "Is our father Odin sightless That ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... Emperor, and subsequently deprived of his nose, ears, hands and feet, and sent to Dehli. Death came to his relief upon the road, it is believed by his being hanged upon a tree 3rd March, 1789, and the mangled trunk was sent to Dehli, where it was laid before the sightless monarch, the most ghastly Nazar that ever was presented in the ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... body's work's expired: For then my thoughts—from far where I abide— Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee, And keep my drooping eyelids open wide, Looking on darkness which the blind do see: Save that my soul's imaginary sight Presents thy shadow to my sightless view, Which, like a jewel (hung in ghastly night, Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new. Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind, For thee, and for myself, ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... vote and wandered brooding, drawn apart From his room-fellows, seeding in his heart Envy, which biting inwards did corrode His mettle, and his ill blood plied the goad Upon his brain, until the wretch made mad Went muttering his wrongs, ill-trimmed, ill-clad, Sightless and careless, with slack mouth awry, And working tongue, and danger in the eye; And oft would stare at Heaven and laugh his scorn: "O fools, think not to trick me!" then forlorn Would gaze about green earth or ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... Girl never knew that ugly shapes of delf and earthenware were on the board; that sorrow and faintheartedness were in the house; that Caleb's scanty hairs were turning greyer and more grey, before her sightless face. The Blind Girl never knew they had a master, cold, exacting, and uninterested—never knew that Tackleton was Tackleton in short; but lived in the belief of an eccentric humourist who loved to have his jest with them, and who, while he was the Guardian Angel of their lives, ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... purified, is acceptable to God. He has left no lies behind him—no debts—no wrongs to be avenged. He told you all, people of Paris, what he was before he left you,—and, looking down into this dark grave, we know what he is. A senseless, sightless, stiffening form of clay, from which the soul that animated it into action has fled. Let the Church excommunicate this poor corpse of my father,—let it muster its forces against his memory as it will, I swear before ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... was now radiant, while her sightless eyes sparkle with enthusiasm. Dorette looked placidly pleased, Larry kindly sympathetic, while Camille showed her delight in her rattling tongue and eager gestures. "We must tell Joyce," she cried, squeezing Dodo's arm in a vain effort to express all she felt. "She is as fond of him as we are. ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... ended;" And, with light in her looks, she entered the chambers of sickness. Noiselessly moved about the assiduous, careful attendants, Moistening the feverish lip, and the aching brow, and in silence Closing the sightless eyes of the dead, and concealing their faces, Where on their pallets they lay, like drifts of snow by the roadside. Many a languid head, upraised as Evangeline entered, Turned on its pillow of pain to gaze while she passed, for her presence Fell on their hearts like a ray of ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... than mirth, whose eyes have grown dim, whose lips tremblingly plead, "Lead, kindly light." "Lead, kindly light." The words are whispered by the old, whose tired feet are unable to move, whose palsied hands are helpless, whose head is bowed by the weight of years, whose eyes are sightless, from whose trembling lips are scarcely heard the whispered prayer, "Lead, ...
— Wise or Otherwise • Lydia Leavitt
... among the closely set chairs and tables to the pavement. The sightless stare of light-blanched spectacles met his eyes. A gentlemanly-looking lady in ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... of him a hero or a convict; of these there was not one that had failed to leave its traces on the grandly-hewn, lividly Italian face. You trembled lest a flash of thought should suddenly light up the deep sightless hollows under the grizzled brows, as you might fear to see brigands with torches and poniards in the mouth of a cavern. You felt that there was a lion in that cage of flesh, a lion spent with useless raging against ...
— Facino Cane • Honore de Balzac
... Too frail for life may be more strong than death; And this poor flash of sense in life, that gleams As a ghost's glory in dreams, More stabile than the world's own heart's root seems, By that strong faith of lordliest love which gives To death's own sightless-seeming eyes a light Clearer, to death's bare bones a verier might, Than shines or strikes from any man that lives. How he that loves life overmuch shall die The dog's death, utterly: And he that much less loves it than he hates All wrongdoing ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Can I go to that doctor?" cried Maria, forgetting her timidity, and turning her sightless eyes towards Mrs. Allen with a joyful look, which seemed to glow through ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... animated converse among themselves, there arose an old man with a bald head, a flowing beard, and sightless eyes. He was the "lagman" or district judge, and law-expounder of Horlingdal. Deep silence ensued, and he said, in a decided though somewhat ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... idolatry and falsehood must be crushed at any risk?—He who counts back for now three hundred years, in persecution after persecution, martyrs, sir! martyrs—if you know what that word implies—of his own blood and kin; who, when he was but a seven years' boy, saw his own father made a sightless cripple to this day, and his elder sister, a consecrated nun, devoured alive by swine in the open streets, at the hands of those who supported the very philosophy, the very gods, which Hypatia attempted yesterday to restore. God shall judge ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... words absent-mindedly rather than angrily. Around us the dim, blurred walls are peering in our direction with sightless eyes, while in the vicinity a bullock is ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... depressed corners of the mouth indicated the bitterness of the privation. Her eyes, large and clear, had a strange quality: extinguished for ever to her, to others they were brilliant. They were mysterious torches lighting only the outside. They gave light but possessed it not. These sightless eyes were resplendent. A captive of shadow, she lighted up the dull place she inhabited. From the depth of her incurable darkness, from behind the black wall called blindness, she flung her rays. She saw not the sun without, but her soul was ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Magnesia, then?" rejoined a large, spongy object on the floor, whose forehead perspired while he looked up through the chalky-white sockets of sightless eyes. "Why, he's a sixth part of all that's drunk at the springs. Here, I'll call him up. Come Magnesia! come Potash! come Lime, Soda, Lithia, and Baryta! Come ye all to the ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... aware of her beautiful arms, and her bosom; her low-crowded, thick hair, parted in the centre: the sapphires on her throat, the heavy rings on her fingers: and the paint on her lips, the fard. Something deep, deep at the bottom of him hovered upon her, cleaved to her. Yet he was as if sightless, in a stupor. Who was she, what was she? He had lost all his grasp. Only he sat there, with his face turned to hers, or to her, all the time. And she talked to him. But she ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... 470 Sang the heroes with their weapons, Sang the young men, sang the old men, And the men of age between them, And his songs spared one man only, And he was a wicked cowherd. Old, with eyes both closed and sightless. ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... declining years the life of this man was a pitiful tragedy, his filmy eyes sightless, his thin white fingers ever eager and nervous, his hours full of deep thought and silent immobility. To him, what was the benefit of that beautiful Perthshire castle which he had purchased from Lord Strathavon a year before his compulsory retirement? What was the use ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... Pelleas and Melisanda, and the Sightless. Two Plays by Maurice Maeterlinck. Translated from the ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... awful manner when the boat was checked, and sometimes seemed to try to wrench itself away, though for the most part it followed submissively. A neophyte might have fancied that the ripples passing over it were dreadfully like faint changes of expression on a sightless face; but Gaffer was no neophyte ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... knows, She knows well enough to come for food, Yet she sees me not; Her bright eye sees, but not me, not anything, Sightful, sightless, ...
— Tortoises • D. H. Lawrence
... these, in vain thy muse appears To breathe her ardours in our souls; In vain to sightless eyes, and deaden'd ears, Thy lightning gleams, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin |
