"Starlight" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... disappeared when Deerslayer reached his new post, and for some little time he directed the course of the slow-moving craft by himself. It was not long, however, before Judith came out of the cabin, as if disposed to do the honors of the place to a stranger engaged in the service of her family. The starlight was sufficient to permit objects to be plainly distinguished when near at hand, and the bright eyes of the girl had an expression of kindness in them, when they met those of the youth, that the latter was easily ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... back, and without waiting for a reply fled from the room. Once in the hall I took down my hat from the rack and slipped out into the night, my pulses throbbing feverishly, and with difficulty repressing the longing to find relief in a burst of tears. The short twilight had quite faded away into starlight, but the autumn air was still warm enough to permit a stroll after nightfall. When I grew calm enough to notice whither my feet had strayed, I found myself on the Mill Road. Instinctively I felt I should not go so far from home in the darkness ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... from their victims and toward the guards, leaving a woman to stagger aimlessly with blood spurting from a severed artery and splashing dark in the starlight on the blue-white snow. The air was filled with the cracking of gunfire and the deep, savage snarling of the prowlers. Half of the prowlers broke through, leaving seven dead guards behind them. The others lay in the snow where they had fallen and ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... first thing we knew, they came rompin' around each corner an' poured in on top of us. They was used to fightin' against odds, an' it irritated 'em consid'able to take so long at a job with the odds in their favor. Outside, the starlight give us a purty fair aim, while they couldn't do more than guess at us—so we beat 'em off ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... jogging along, helping one another in the troubles of the road, and singing goodly hymns and songs to keep their courage moving, when suddenly a horseman stopped in the starlight ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... motionless and invisible in the deep shadows of the clump of bush, soft swishing sounds in the long grass grew increasingly frequent all round me, and in the misty starlight I caught frequent sudden glimpses of indeterminate forms gliding ghost-like toward the water, which was evidently the recognised drinking place for most of the game in the neighbourhood. And at length, when I had been standing there for about ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... heavy calibre; our infantry using that never-failing weapon the bayonet, whenever the enemy stood. Night only saved them from worse disaster; for this stout conflict was maintained during an hour and a half of dim starlight, amidst a cloud of dust from the sandy plain, which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... the battle was over, but in the glare and flash he looked and saw another column, ghostly gray in the starlight, moving stubbornly at ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... things were we at one in delight; for we had both of us that nature which doth love the blue of eternity which gathers beyond the wings of the sunset; and the invisible sound of the starlight falling upon the world; and the quiet of grey evenings when the Towers of Sleep are builded unto the mystery of the Dusk; and the solemn green of strange pastures in the moonlight; and the speech of the sycamore unto the beech; and ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... were floating round the room in the old slow legato step, which recalled to Smithson the picture of a still more spacious room in an island under the Southern Cross—the blue water of the bay shining yonder under the starlight of the tropics, fire-flies gleaming and flashing in the foliage beyond the open windows, fire-flies flashing amidst the gauzy draperies of the dancers, and this same Gomez revolving with the same slow languid ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... lanterns and their cocoanut oil and some coils of rope in there. At intervals soft-footed natives came in, and I was never certain whether it was to slay me or to get some of their stores. Once a figure blocked out the starlight at one of the windows, and I heard a rustling and shuffling on the shelf where my food tins were piled. So I said, "Sigue! ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... recurring in the nick of opportunity. He crossed the bridge, and, going up to a window, knocked six or seven heavy blows in a particular cadence, and, as he did so, smiled. Presently a wicket was opened in the gate, and a man's head appeared in the dim starlight. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dextrous as the contrivance of it had been, was not destined to succeed. The vessel moved gently from the shore, rowed by the mariners. It was a clear starlight night. The sea was smooth, and the air was calm. Agrippina took her place upon a couch which had been arranged for her, under a sort of canopy or awning, the frame-work of which, above, had been secretly loaded with lead. She was attended here by one of her ladies named Aceronia Polla, ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... not to notice when Gertrude got up and wandered out into the starlight. As soon as I was satisfied that she had gone, however, I went out cautiously. I had no intention of eavesdropping, but I wanted to be certain that it was Jack Bailey she was meeting. Too many things had occurred in which Gertrude ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Robin's eyes shone like two deep pools reflecting starlight. "I'd like to know everyone here in the village and what they do. Perhaps the—the other Forsyths wanted to really know the Mill people, too, only they—they've been so unhappy. But I'm different, you see—I'm a ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... outer hull of chaotic confusion, visions of the Devil, nervous dreams, almost semi-madness; and yet such a clear determinate man's-energy working in the heart of that. A kind of chaotic man. The ray as of pure starlight and fire, working in such an element of boundless hypochondria, unformed black of darkness! And yet withal this hypochondria, what was it but the very greatness of the man? The depth and tenderness of his wild affections: the quantity ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... man. I don't rob the poor." Dylks lifted himself, and said with that air of mysterious mastery which afterwards won so many to his obedience, "I work my work. Let no man gainsay me or hinder me." He walked to and fro in the starlight, swelling, with his head up and his mane of black hair cloudily flying over his shoulders as he turned. ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... many minutes we may be sure to hurry from the station to Ruth's home. There it all happened just as he had planned and schemed it should—even to the kiss and the hunting for the package of bonds, and Ruth's cry of joy, and the walk through the starlight night to Corinne's, and the finding her upstairs; except that the poor woman ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... already outside, waiting in the starlight; and as Don stepped out quickly with his heart beating and a sense of suffocation at the throat, he could just make out that the Maori held the third musket, and had also ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... incessant motion could be clearly perceived whenever the starlight broke through the clouds, appeared first near the city of the dead and the strangers' quarter. Both the youth and the old man had been seized with terror, but the latter was the first to regain his self-control, and his keen eye, trained to watch the stars, speedily discovered that it was not a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... music and dancing were over, it might be about four o'clock. The little people then disappeared, and went each about their work or their pleasure. After supper they sported and danced in the same way; and at midnight, especially on starlight nights, they slipped out of their hills to dance in the open air. John used then, like a good boy, to say his prayers and go to sleep, a duty he never neglected either in the ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... We'll look on the stars, and we'll list to the river, Till you ask of your darling what gift you can give her: Oh! she'll whisper you—"Love, as unchangeably beaming, And trust, when in secret, most tunefully streaming; Till the starlight of heaven above us shall quiver, As our souls flow in one ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... more than friends of mine took for me when I was starting out." Then, as she continued silent, "What are you thinking? I can't see your face in this starlight." ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... on the rope, looked down upon Honoria's upturned face and saw the glimmer of starlight in her eyes; but neither guessed her thoughts ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... taking up her pail, she closed the beudy door, and as she crossed the yard under the bright starlight she recalled Gethin's parting words, "Be easy, Morva," and repeated them to ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... followed, Becky's gay lover came and rode away, and came again. He sparkled and shone and worshipped, but not a word did he say about the future. He seemed content with this idyl of old gardens, scented twilights, starlight nights, with Beauty's eyes for him alone radiant eyes ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... in the saddle. Ahead lay the shadowy foothills of the mother range, vague masses in the starlight. Some thirty miles behind was the railroad and the trail north. There was no chance of picking up a fresh horse. The country was uninhabited. Alone, the gunman would have ridden swiftly to the hill country, where his trail would have been lost in the rocky ground ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... a head, and Jack struck out for it. He swam in silence, and within half a dozen strokes had a man by the hair. He turned the face up to the starlight and saw that it was Jim Dent, and that the gunsmith appeared to be unconscious. Taking a firmer grip of Jim's hair, Jack struck out down stream and swam as fast as he could towards the approaching light, which was now much bigger and brighter. ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... aloft into the top; lowered a girtline down, by which we hauled up the rigging; rove the tacks and halyards; ran out the boom and lashed it fast, and sent down the lower halyards as a preventer. It was a clear starlight night, cold and blowing; but everybody worked with a will. Some, indeed, looked as though they thought the "old man" was mad, but no one said ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... pale, his eyes dark, there was a faint spark of starlight on them. And he saw her face soft and upturned to him, very near. He ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... walk down the pike, lying white and ghostly under the starlight, was paced in silence, man and boy striding side by side and each busy with his own thoughts. As they were passing the Deer Trace gates a loose-jointed figure loomed black against the palings, and the voice ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... would warn him, and before the sun was up he could be beyond the Sanhedrim's reach, and she preparing to follow. For a moment she lost herself in anticipation; then, the threat loosening its hold, she stood up, her face very white in the starlight, her eyes brave and alert. Already her plan was formed; and, taking a vase that she had brought with her from Magdala, she hurried ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... start, some clear-blown night, When gaunt stone walls grow numb an' number, An', creakin' 'cross the snow-crus' white, Walk the col' starlight into summer; 60 Up grows the moon, an' swell by swell Thru the pale pasturs silvers dimmer Than the last smile thet strives to tell O' love gone heavenward in ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... evident that his prize did not mean to be kept, but fought for his liberty with might and main, while at the first encounter the writhing pair had come in contact with one of the poles which supported the tent, the lamp had fallen, and the place now, save for the dim starlight seen through the doorway, was ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... Hoar's, only herself and Miss E. Hoar, G.P. Bradford, Mr. and Mrs. Emerson, and myself and Mr. Hoar. She played Beethoven, sang the "Adelaide Serenade," "Fischer Madchen," "Amid this Green Wood." I walked home under the low, heavy, gray clouds; but the echo lingered about me like starlight. ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... should by all means be seen by a bright starlight, or under the growing sickle of a young moon. The fainter ray and deeper gloom bring out more strongly its visionary and ideal character. When the full moon has blotted out the stars, it fills the vast gulf of the building with a flood of spectral light, which falls with a chilling touch upon the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... dreams on the Cornish hills: Trembling within the low moon's pallid fires, The tall corn-tassels lift their fragrant spires; From filmy spheres, a liquid starlight fills — Like dew of daffodils — The fragile dark, where multitudinous The rhythmic, intermittent silence thrills, Like song, the valleys. — "Hark!" he murmurs, "Thus May bards ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... Nation, now that stands Clad on with hope and beauty, strength and song, Eternal, young, and strong, Planting her heel on Wrong, Her starry banner in triumphant hands.... Within her face the rose Of Alleghany dawns; Limbed with Alaskan snows, Floridian starlight in her eyes,— Eyes stern as steel yet tender as a fawn's,— And in her hair The rapture of her rivers; and the dare, As perishless as truth, That o'er the crags of her Sierras flies, Urging the eagle ardor through her veins, Behold her where, Around her radiant youth, The spirits of ...
— An Ode • Madison J. Cawein
... up and down the piazza. The great pines were weighed down to the ground by masses of snow. Now and then, when the wind stirred the upper branches, avalanches slid noiselessly off, and built themselves again into banks below. There was no moon, but the starlight was so brilliant that the snow crystals glistened in it. As they looked at the sky, a star suddenly fell. It moved very slowly, and was more than a ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... Swedish people in reference to the various landscapes visited by the wild goose in its flight. In another romance, "Goesta Berling," she has interpreted the life of the province at Vermland, where she herself was born on a farmstead in 1858. A love of starlight, violins, and dancing, a temperament easily provoked to a laughing abandon of life's tragedy characterizes the folk of Vermland and the impecunious gentry who live in its modest manor halls. It is a different folk to whom one is introduced ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... lights, or the harmonies of the old asthmatic organ in yonder gallery; our pattern will be taken from the last scene of 'Il Don Giovanni.' You will have no pasteboard figure suspended from the roof, and wafted upward in starlight or moonlight. But if you wish to see the exhibition, I am concerned to tell you that you must wait, for to-night all our artistes are busy. In what, do ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... was vaguely visible, now, becoming clearer in the starlight. She was a Boer-class freighter, all right. Probably the Jan Smuts; the Oom Paul Kruger had last been reported at Bwork, and there was little chance that she had slipped into Keegark since the uprising had started. For all anybody knew, she could have been destroyed in ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... cavalry, and toward this he at once made his way. He took off his boots and walked lightly until he approached the enemy's bivouac. Then he went cautiously. The ground was covered with sleeping figures, all wrapped like mummies in their clothes; and although the night was dusk, it was easy in the starlight to see the white figures. Even had one been awake, Dick had little fear, as, except near a fire, his figure would have been indistinguishable. There was no difficulty, when he neared the spot, in finding ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... man and a young woman courting, walking out in the moonlight, and the nightingale singing a song of pain and love, as though the thorn touched her heart—imagine them stopping there in the moonlight and starlight and song, and saying, "Now, here, let us settle who is 'boss!'" I tell you it is an infamous word and an infamous feeling—I abhor a man who is "boss," who is going to govern in his family, and when he speaks orders all the rest to be still as some ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... looking up, saw, far over him, on the top of the wall, two heads standing out against the clear sky, one in a bonnet, the other in a Glengarry. Why should he feel a pang in his heart? Surely there were many girls who took starlight walks on that refuge in the sea. And a Glengarry was no uncommon wear for the youths of the city. He laughed at his own weak fancies, turned his back on the pier, and walked along the shore towards the mouth of the other river which flowed into the same bay. As ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... as I stood there. It was starlight, and the great crests of the Alleghanies had given way to low hills. At intervals we passed smudges of gray white, no doubt in daytime comfortable farms, which McKnight says is a good way of putting ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the main street a hundred men were in line behind them, and while they sought in the deceptive starlight for the trail that dipped down the bank to the river, more men could be heard arriving. Shorty slipped and shot down the thirty-foot chute into the soft snow. Smoke followed, knocking him over as he was ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... his usual custom, drank lightly, and often he would find his thoughts wandering among the most incongruous events— starlight nights in a far-off islet, tossings on distant seas, and over and over again they would stray to that glimpse of a maiden in the Jemtland forests. Helgi, in whose blue eyes there danced a light that was never kindled by water, rallied him ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... to the relief, Glenn and I posted our vaqueros to be on the lookout for the pinto beef. The cattle were intentionally bedded loose; but even in the starlight and waning moon, every man easily spotted the ladino beef, uneasily stalking back and forth like a caged tiger across the bed ground. A half hour before dawn, he made a final effort to escape, charging out between Gallup and the vaquero following up on the same side. From the other ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... bound I had vaulted prison roof and California sky, and was among the stars. I say "stars" advisedly. I walked among the stars. I was a child. I was clad in frail, fleece-like, delicate-coloured robes that shimmered in the cool starlight. These robes, of course, were based upon my boyhood observance of circus actors and my boyhood conception of the ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... the cabin, left our berths, and lay, wrapped up in cloaks, upon deck. Having talked for some hours, we were both on the point of falling asleep, when a stealthy tread near our heads awoke us. It was starlight; and we traced between ourselves and the sky the outline of a man's figure. Lying upon a mass of tarpaulings, we were ourselves undistinguishable, and the figure moved in the direction of the coach. Our first thought ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... to the starlight, and by the time they reached the field called Four Acre, Amos was seeing pretty clear. In one corner where a field path ran from a stile down the side, was a stony hillock dotted with blackthorns and briars and all overgrown with ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... music can satisfy us after such dancing," said Mr. Fitzgerald. She looked up to him with a smile; and Alfred thought the rising of those dark eyelashes surpassed their downcast expression, as the glory of morning sunshine excels the veiled beauty of starlight. ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... rustlings in the hedge, and the long branches of the trees moaned as they swayed. It was so dark they were almost groping their way, and could barely see the banks on either side. Suddenly, through a rift in the trees came a faint gleam of starlight, and oh! horror of horrors! What was that black dog-like object running rapidly towards them up the lane? Mavis, whose over-sensitive nerves were strung up to the last point, yelled with terror, and clung screaming to Merle, who gave ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... encourage them; they came with the suddenness and the start of lightning. Merely the colour of a hill at sunset was enough to flash back her thoughts to an hour when she was looking for Evan; or a certain sort of starlight night would recall a particular walk along the meadow fence; or a gust and whiff of the wind would bring with it the thrill that belonged to one certain stormy September night that never faded in her remembrance. Or the ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... and took their meal; The Persians took it on the open sands Southward, the Tartars by the river marge; And Rustum and his son were left alone. But the majestic river floated on, Out of the mist and hum of that low land, Into the frosty starlight, and there moved, Rejoicing, through the hush'd Chorasmian waste, Under the solitary moon;—he flow'd Right for the polar star, past Orgunje, Brimming, and bright, and large; then sands begin To hem his watery march, and ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... dark; And Agni's shining spark; Varuna's waves are Thy waves. Moon and starlight Are Thine! Prajapati Art Thou, and 'tis to Thee They knelt in worshipping ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... themes,—start not! gentle reader,—fit for a ghost like me. Yes; though an earth-clogged fancy is laboring with these conceptions, and an earthly hand will write them down, for mortal eyes to read, still their essence flows from as airy a ghost as ever basked in the pale starlight, at twelve o'clock. Judge them not by the gross and heavy form in which they now appear. They may be gross, indeed, with the earthly pollution contracted from the brain, through which they pass; and heavy with the burden of mortal language, ...
— Other Tales and Sketches - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in obeying The law that bids thee blossom in the world Thy little flag of courage is unfurled; Inherent pansy-memories are saying That there is sun, That there is dew and colour and warmth repaying The rain, the starlight when ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... oppressive kicked them off. At length the bedroom clock told the hour of twelve in its slow soft musical language. And still she tossed and turned until it struck one. She rose and drew aside the window-curtains to let the pale starlight shine into the room, and then going back to bed sat propped up with the pillows. "Must I really wait all that time," she said, "sitting still, eating my own heart—wait through half of September, October, November, December—only to put ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... its usual place and continued up the hill to the opening at the back, then stood long listening. Once he thought he heard something drop inside the kitchen door, but no sound followed it and he concluded it had been a rat. Half way between himself and the back door something gleamed faintly in the starlight. He didn't remember to have seen anything there before. He stole cautiously over, moving so slowly that he could not even hear himself. He paused beside the gleam and examined. It was an empty flask still redolent. Ummm! Booze! Billy wasn't surprised. Of course they would try to get ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... astronomer tells us, is cooling down; the night is coming; an all-pervading cold will some day chill into rigid death the last vestige of organic life. Our poor planet will be but a silent ghost whirling on its dark path in the starlight. This ultimate disaster is, as far as our vision goes, inevitable. Yet no one concerns himself with it. So should it be with the danger of the ultimate overcrowding of ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... men talked as they walked the deck and smoked in the starlight. They were wakeful after their long nap in the afternoon, and they walked and talked late, with the silences that old friends can permit themselves. Staniford recurred to his loss of money and his Western projects, ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... read and spoke of Shelley with a rapture of joy,—he was still my soul. But this craft, fashioned of mother o' pearl, with starlight at the helm and moonbeams for sails, suddenly ran on a reef and went down, not out of sight, but out of the agitation of actual life. The reef was Gautier; I read "Mdlle. de Maupin." The reaction was as violent as it was sudden. I was weary of spiritual passion, and this great exaltation ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... at once—except some who sang—and, in the words of the country newspapers, "a pleasant time was had by all." And at ten the Follow Me's crew got back into their dingey and went off into the darkness of a starlight night, rather noisy still in a sleepy way, and, presumably, reached their destination. At least, no more was heard of them that night. On the Adventurer berths were pulled out or let down and a quarter of an hour after the departure ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... night, and the wind was shifting, whilst the sea dashed with so much force, that I did not understand how any vessels could approach without being cast on shore. What confirmed this idea was, that by the starlight I saw a small boat rowing backwards and forwards, as if it feared to land. They told me afterwards that this was only a manoeuvre to ascertain if all was ready for the unloading, and no danger to be apprehended. Peters now lighted a reflecting lantern, which one ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XII, No. 347, Saturday, December 20, 1828. • Various
... If the starlight, the moonlight, the dawn, the sunrise, the sunset, the blue sky, the tranquility of a summer day or the grandeur of a storm have no response in the mother's soul, then how can a child be expected to lift its eyes and see the beautiful everywhere, ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... passage by the Butter Cross, and along the railed pavement by the Minster Close. On the colonel's ear their three footfalls sounded as though a dream. The vast bulk of the minster, glimmering above the leafless elms, the solid Norman tower with its edges bathed in starlight, were transient things, born of faery, unsubstantial as the small figure that tripped ahead of him clutching a ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... The starlight shone upon the tombstone, and on it the sleeper read this inscription—"In memory of Valentine Jernam, ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... how long he slept. He woke with a sudden start and a presentiment of evil. It was quite dark, as black as starlight night could be; for the foam of the waves hardly glimmered to sight, except here and there where some phosphorescent jelly was tossed among them like a blue death-light. What had wakened Caius was the sound of voices talking ahead of the cart, and the jerk of the cart as it was evidently ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... unearthly sound, That seemed to lift me from the ground And hold me floating in the air. I looked, and lo! I saw her bow Above a harp within her hands; A crown of blossoms bound her brow, And on her harp were twisted strands Of silken starlight, rippling o'er With music never heard before By mortal ears; and, at the strain, I felt my Spirit snap its chain And break away,—and I could see It as it turned and fled from me To greet its mistress, where she smiled To see the phantom dancing wild And wizard-like before the ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... metal walls of the room were glowing now with some strange current which suffused them. The starlight from the window-lens mingled with an opalescent sheen from the glowing walls. It was like an aura, bathing the room—an aura which seemed to penetrate every smallest ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings
... moon; and even the brilliant starlight of summer in Hellas is an uncertain guide. Democrates knew he was traversing a long avenue lined by spreading cypresses, with a shimmer of white from some tall, sepulchral monument. Then through the dimness loomed the high columns of a temple, and ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... want of imagination, she was conscious of a sort of weird interest in her surroundings. The wintry afternoon had closed into evening, but the whiteness of the snow threw a dim brightness underneath the faint starlight, while the gleam of the carriage lights enabled them to see the dark figures that passed and repassed underneath ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the Fultons' yard had not yet been switched on. In a recess cut from the foliage of a cedar tree, a white garden seat glimmered in the starlight. ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... Campfires were almost useless. The men's clothes were insufficient and nearly worn out. During the last few days, on the march and in the camp, every one had huddled together whatever seemed warmest, and in the pale moon or starlight, figures in strange disguises might be seen. One wore the thick wadded cloak of a peasant woman over woefully torn trousers, another whose toes till now had always been seen out of noisy boots, stalked in enormous wooden shoes, the extra room being filled ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... leaps from the last mountain. Soon, perhaps, the moon shall rise, and in her gentler light the valley shall be mellowed and misted, and here and there a wisp of silver cloud upon a hilltop, and here and there a warmly glowing window in a house, between fire and starlight, kind and homely ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... splendours with more splendour: a long overcoat of so glorious a plaid it paled the planets above us; and he wandered restlessly about the garden in this refulgence, glancing at us now and then with what, in spite of the insufficient revelation of the starlight, we both recognised as a chilling disapproval. The lights of the inn were all out; the courtyard was dark. The Spanish woman and Monsieur Rameau had made their appearance for a moment, half an hour earlier, to exchange a word with their fellow vigilant, and, soon after, the ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... into the starlight. He could see through the windows of the restaurant, and no one was there. Then he sat on the bench again, under the ivy—but all was darkness and silence; and thoroughly depressed, Paul at last ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... of starlight glittered in the cloudless vault of heaven, above the moonlit stillness of the valley. The clear-cut shadows of the balcony and the stone urns fell across the cold paths and whitened grass of ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... a lofty obelisk of snow-white marble, rising from the black and heavy mass of foliage around, and pointing upward to the gleam of the departed sun, that still lingered in the sky, and mingled with the soft starlight of a summer evening. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... told the same doubtful tale. From the way they grew, even in that dim starlight, Felix recognized at once they ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... of the Miette clearing and saw the glow of lights ahead of them, Aldous caught the sudden upturn of his companion's face, laughing at him in the starlight. ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... which is the sun of a far distant sphere. The star may give us light, but not the day; it may give us direction in our voyage of exploration, but it can never open the full view of truth before our eyes. In fact, we can never use this cold starlight for stirring the sap in our branches, and giving colour and bloom to our life. This is the reason why European education has become for India mere school lessons and no culture; a box of matches, good for the small uses of illumination, but not the light of ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... moment in my lonely way under the starlight, and saw spread before me the darkened earth surrounding with her arms countless homes furnished with cradles and beds, mothers' hearts and evening lamps, and young lives glad with a gladness that knows nothing of its ...
— The Crescent Moon • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... the effect of the buildings with their lofty classic porticos, viewed under the influence of a fine starlight night, was imposing enough: the situation is well chosen, appearing like a natural elevation in the midst of a plain, and overlooking the waters of the Susquehannah, above whose ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... at the very beginning of time, when the world had just been made, there was no night. It was day all the time. No one had ever heard of sunrise or sunset, starlight or moonbeams. There were no night birds, nor night beasts, nor night flowers. There were no lengthening shadows, nor soft night ...
— Fairy Tales from Brazil - How and Why Tales from Brazilian Folk-Lore • Elsie Spicer Eells
... little pupils, could discover nothing but a group of persons that seemed to be the sole survivors of some titanic race. Not one among them but seemed to have reached the high-water mark of six feet. Was it an optical illusion, a hallucination born of the wonderful starlight? Or were they as huge as they seemed? The young men looked giants, the girls as if they had wandered out of the first chapters of Genesis. Their mother introduced them. They all had huge, warm, perspiring hands, with grips like bears. ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... low from the floor of heaven pulsating with stars; it was a passionate, tender night, and Ruth, with her face raised to the holy beauty, was a dreamy part of it. Against the black lace about her head her face shone like a cameo, her eyes were brown wells of starlight; she scarcely seemed to breathe, so still she sat, her slender hands loosely clasped in ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... take little Denis in her hand. She was not long gone. As soon as she entered the wood she heard the sound of her children's laughter above the noise the monkeys made; and she was guided by it to the well. There, in the midst of the opening which let in the starlight, stood the well, surrounded by the only grass on the Breda estate that was always fresh and green; and there were Isaac and his inseparable companion, Aimee, making the grass greener by splashing each ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... gave their officers some trouble to stop them. This was done, however, and the waste of ammunition was left to the Arabs, who kept up a dropping fire till dawn, wounding a poor camel by chance, but unable to do much damage by starlight from the distance at which ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... water. Amid the tamarack-clothed islets the motor-boats crept in and out in a delightful way. To lie on the cushions in the cockpit of the Lauriette and bask in the pearly starlight was an experience the girl from Cheslow was not ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... Lytton, a favorite and familiar visitor at Casa Guidi; Frederick Tennyson (and perhaps his "forty fiddlers" as well), and the Trollopes, Isa Blagden, and various wandering minstrels. They passed evenings with Mr. Lytton in his villa, and would walk home "to the song of nightingales by starlight and firefly light." To Mrs. Browning Florence looked more beautiful than ever after Rome. "I love the very stones of it," she said. Limitations of finance kept them in Florence all that summer. "A ship was to have brought us in something, and brought us in nothing," she explained to a friend in England, ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... may profitably be applied to a cross life are uncommon and innumerable. It is not given to all men to be light-brained, light-limbed, light-fingered. A courage which shall face an enemy under the starlight, or beneath the shadow of a wall, which shall track its prey to a well-defended lair, is far rarer than a law-abiding cowardice. The recklessness that risks all for a present advantage is called genius, if a victorious general urge ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... and the "spellin'-bee" at school No. 5 came on apace together. It was bitterly cold and starlight. By eight o'clock the warm schoolhouse was comfortably filled with the "spellers" of the neighbourhood, their numbers increased by competitors from Tinkletown itself. In the crowd were men and women ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... the monotonous roar that fills The ravine where the Yassin river sullenly flows; He did not see the starlight on the Laspur hills, Or the ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... he could get a man to come and mend the wheel. The five francs were promised, and he untackled a horse and rode off. Mary and I walked up and down the dark, desolate road, occasionally reminding each other that we were on classic ground, and laughing at the oddity of our lonely, starlight promenade. After a while our driver came back, Tag, Rag, and Bobtail at his heels. I don't think I can do greater justice to Italian costumes than by ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... impression of the dangers of slumber made him think suddenly of his revolver. He left the bedroom with noiseless footsteps. The lightness of the curtain he had to lift as he passed out, and the outer door, wide open on the blackness of the veranda—for the roof eaves came down low, shutting out the starlight—gave him a sense of having been dangerously exposed, he could not have said to what. He pulled the drawer open. Its emptiness cut his train of self-communion short. He murmured to ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... the branches yielded easily to his hand. A winding path appeared before us, proceeding along which, we arrived in an open forest glade. On one side rose a high rock, which seemed part of a range of cliffs forming the side of a mountain. The murmuring sound of water met my ear, and by the faint starlight I discovered a stream gushing forth from the rock, and finding its way in a narrow ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... an opportunity to send this. Again the lights are shining up from Pesth, lightning appears on the horizon in the direction of the Theiss, and there is starlight above us. I have been in uniform most of the day, handed my credentials to the young ruler of this country at a solemn audience, and received a very pleasing impression of him—twenty-year-old vivacity, coupled with studied composure. He can be very winning, I have seen that; whether he always ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... my window in the night Is but a drab inglorious street, Yet there the frost and clean starlight As over Warwick ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... the cabin! Young Pete's fighting blood swelled his pulse. He and pop had been partners. And partners always "stuck." Pete crept cautiously to the window. Halfway across the clearing the blurred hulk of running horses loomed in the starlight. Young Pete rested his carbine on the window-sill and centered on the bulk. He fired and thought he saw a horse rear. Again he fired. This was much easier than shooting deer. He beard a cry and the drumming of hoofs. Something crashed against the door. Pete whirled and fired point-blank. ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... the way home, and sat up to pity him, looking through the soft May starlight to see the lamp burning steadily at his window until after midnight. From that time I seemed to have a trouble,—though I could scarcely have named or owned ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... glad when the day dawned, or if the night happened to be fair and starlight; for the spectres vanished when the sun shone, and the tranquil beauty of the stars ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... has the rock beneath it in the eternal laws on which it rests; the roll of deep waters in its grander harmonies; its air is full of Aeolian strains that waken and die away as the breeze wanders over them; and through it shines the white starlight, and from time to time flashes a meteor that startles us with its ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... us. There in the holiest place of all, according to their thinking, close to the emblems of deity, they had set this grievous perversion of the holy and the pure. Right on the topmost pinnacle of everything known as religious there they had enthroned it, and robed it in starlight and crowned it as queens are crowned. "Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness!" "One thing have I desired of the Lord . . . to behold the fair beauty of the Lord"—such words open chasms of contrast. God pity them; like ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... we neared the palisade, which was dimly seen in the starlight, and the flashes of the rifles and the lights we saw going here and there added to the excitement of the scene as Mr Raydon ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... much together, in English; and after dinner we walked in the garden together by starlight arm in arm, and she was so kind and genial to me in English that I felt quite chivalrous and romantic, and ready to do doughty deeds ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... the others were asleep, however, the shaggy man sat in the starlight by the spring, gazing thoughtfully into its bubbling waters. Suddenly he smiled and nodded to himself as if he had found a good thought, after which he, too, laid himself down under a tree and was soon lost ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum
... "was sent from way down in the desert—from Starlight, another new camp. It looks to me as if the boy has struck something very important. I'll read you what he says—or you ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... earth. The one shall become silver, and the other wampum. They shall shine like fire, and glisten like the most beautiful scarlet. Every female shall also change her state and looks, and no longer be doomed to laborious tasks. She shall put on the beauty of the starlight, and become a shining bird of the air, clothed with shining feathers. She shall dance and not work—she shall sing ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... wheeled arm in arm and surveyed him. In the starlight his round child face showed white ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... not even know it was a statue. I had made by night the short journey from Genoa to this place beside the sea; and, driving along the coast-road to the hotel that had been recommended, I passed what in the starlight looked like nothing but an elderly woman mounted on a square pedestal and gazing out seaward—a stout, elderly, lonely woman in a poke bonnet, indescribable except by that old Victorian term 'a party,' and as unlike Balzac's younger ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... anchored between the Cove and Pinchgut, ready for sea. The north-easter, which for three days had blown strongly, had now died away, and the placid waters of the harbour shimmered under the starlight of an almost cloudless sky. As the old mate tramped to and fro on the deserted poop, his keen seaman's eye caught sight of some faint grey clouds rising low down in the westward—signs of a south-easterly coming before ...
— Foster's Letter Of Marque - A Tale Of Old Sydney - 1901 • Louis Becke
... least, was safe, and the knowledge brought pure thankfulness. Not for anything in the world would he have had her entangled in this tragic coil. Leaning over the gate he saw the school steps, faintly white in the starlight. It needed small effort of imagination to see her there as he had seen her that first day—a happy girl, looking at him with the long, straight glance of unawakened youth. A great wave of protecting love went out to meet that vision. Self was lost in its immensity. ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... I suppose; but afterwards I found two skeletons lying in the passengers' cabins, where death had come to them. It was curious to stand on that deck and recognise it all, bit by bit; a place against the rail where I'd been fond of smoking by starlight, and the corner where an old chap from Sydney used to flirt with a widow we had aboard. A comfortable couple they'd been, only a month ago, and now you couldn't have got a meal for a baby ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... grimy dormer window, not looking down into the square, but leading like a companion hatchway into a valley of once red tiles, now stained blue-black in the starlight. It was great to stand upright here in the pure night air out of sight of man or beast. Smokeless chimney-stacks deleted whole pages of stars, but put me more in mind of pollards rising out of these rigid valleys, and sprouting with telephone wires that interlaced for foliage. The valley ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... easily, and am in excellent condition," he said, as he and Deronda came out under the starlight, which was still faint with the lingering sheen of day. "I didn't hurry in setting off, because I wanted to inquire into things a little, and so I got sight of your letter to Lady Mallinger before I started. But now, how ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... brighter the object viewed, the greater the dispersion of the rays. So that if the crystalline lens of the eye alone were used, we should see every white object bluish in the middle, and yellowish and reddish at the edges; or, in vulgar language, we should see starlight. ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... torpor came at last; the fingers lost their tension, the arms unbent; then the little head fell away from the bosom, and the blue eyes of the child opened wide on the cold starlight. At first there was a little peevish cry of "Mammy," as the child rolled downward; and then, suddenly, its eyes were caught by a bright gleaming light on the white ground, and with the ready transition of infancy it decided the light must ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... ledge of a steep rocky wall some fifty feet above a wide level landscape. Vegetation! I saw trees—a forest off to the left. A range of naked hills lay behind it. A mile away, in front and to the right, a little town nestled on the shore of shining water. There was starlight on the water! And over it a vast blue-purple sky ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... myself associated, and made good our escape. We think all our party escaped to the woods. Whether any were afterward caught by the rebels, we know not. We traveled by starlight for more than three weeks. After twenty-one days of fatigue and hunger—living most of the time on corn or persimmons—occasionally a few raw sweet potatoes or a head of cabbage—dodging the rebel pickets and cavalry, climbing mountains, dragging ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger |
