"Darksome" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... yet the world is darkling?" She said: "In the days of my youth I dwelt in the house of my father, and fair was the tide forsooth, And ever I woke at the dawning, for folk betimes must stir, Be the meadows bright or darksome; and I drank of the whey-tub there As much as the heart desired; and now, though changed be the days, I wake athirst in the dawning, because ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... "Our Puddin' in some darksome lair In iron chains is bound, While puddin'-snatchers on him fare, And eat him by ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... side; and said: 'For her nor throne Nor marriage bower! She in some holy house Shall dwell the Bride of Christ. But thou, just God, This day avenge my people!' Windwaed field Heard, distant still, that multitudinous foe Trampling the darksome ways. With pallid face Morning beheld their standards, raven-black— Penda had thus decreed, before him sending Northumbria's sentence. On a hill, thick-set Stood Oswy's army, small, yet strong in faith, A wedge-like phalanx, fenced by rocks ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... Drona marked the darksome close of day, And with Kripa and with Bhishma homeward silent bent ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... higher up, the white cliff all stained and weather-spoiled, the rock in some parts looking quite chalky, and elsewhere gleaming hard and dull like dirty marbles, while in the huge withdrawals of the coast yawn darksome gullies and caverns. Here, in that morning's walk, I saw three little hermit-crabs, a limpet, and two ninnycocks in a pool of weeds under a bearded rock. What astonished me here, and, indeed, above, and everywhere, in London even, and other towns, was the incredible number ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... hill and dale Beneath its darksome wing Are heard thy sweet and mellow notes Through the lone midnight ring; And if a pang within thy breast Should cause thy heart to bleed, Thou wilt not hush until the dawn Shall drive thee from ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... passions quickened with drink, leaned his hands upon the table and glared across at me. He seemed to be the incarnation of rage and ferocity, to so great a pitch had he wrought himself. The sputtering candle feebly flickered, and seemed to give its dim light only that the darksome shadows might flit and hover about us like vampires on the scent of blood. A cold perspiration induced by a nameless fear came upon me, and in that dark future to which my heated imagination travelled I saw, as if revealed by black magic, fair, sweet, generous Dorothy, standing ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... virgin, hast thou with the most doleful tears called me forth leaning on the support of a blind foot[50] to the light, a bed-ridden man from his darksome chamber, gray-headed, an obscure phantom of air—a dead body ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... reigned for fifty years. He had a nephew Edward (an apocryphal person: such figures are common in ballads), who wished to take part in the invasion of Scotland. The English are repulsed by old Maitland from his "darksome house" on the Leader. The English, however, (stanza xv.) conquer Scotland, and join Edward I. in ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... of Heroes) relates the ever-varying contests between the Finns and the "darksome Laplanders", just as the Iliad relates the contests between the Greeks and the Trojans. Castren is of the opinion that the enmity between the Finns and the Lapps was sung long before the Finns had left their ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... best place under the circumstances, and that they must try to make themselves as agreeable as possible at home. Cornelia quoted, for the benefit of the rest, a receipt she had somewhere met with for the "manufacture of sunshine," which she thought would be especially valuable on such a darksome day: "Take a good handful of industry, mix it thoroughly with family love, and season well with good-nature and mutual forbearance. Gradually stir in smiles, and jokes, and laughter, to make it light, but take care these ingredients ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... penetrated, And his strange conduct at the dance With Olga; nor of this appeared An explanation: she was scared, Alarmed by jealous agonies: A hand of ice appeared to seize(62) Her heart: it seemed a darksome pit Beneath her roaring opened wide: "I shall expire," Tattiana cried, "But death from him will be delight. I murmur not! Why mournfulness? He cannot give ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... The birds, God's poor who cannot wait, From moor and mere and darksome wood Came flocking for their ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... brave and just, O guide us through life's darksome way! And let the tortures of mistrust ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... your castle ha's, Nor yet in your lofty towers; My heart is sick o' your gloomy hame, An' sick o' your darksome bowers; An' oh! I wish I were far awa' Frae their grandeur an' their gloom, Where the freeborn lintie sings its sang On the Muir ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... that light unsufferable, And that far-beaming blaze of majesty, Wherewith he wont at Heaven's high council-table To sit the midst of Trinal Unity, He laid aside; and, here with us to be, Forsook the courts of everlasting day, And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay. ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... gorge; for none of the ravines in this part of the country merited the name of valley, save that through which flowed the Caniapuscaw River. The ravine up which they had been toiling for some time led into this darksome glen, and it was on rounding a bold precipice, which had hitherto concealed it from view, that Frank's quick eye caught sight of the object to which he directed the attention ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... was near—the darksome vines clustered far and wide in front of the building and behind it rose a copse of lofty forest trees, sleeping in the melancholy moonlight; beyond stretched the dim outline of the distant hills, and amongst them the quiet crest of Vesuvius, ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... frost-king clothed the forests In a flood of gorgeous dyes, Death called little dark-browed Martha To her mansion in the skies. 'Twas a calm October Sabbath When the bell with solemn sound Knelled her to her quiet slumbers Low down in the darksome ground. ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... a strong odour of over-ripe mirabelle plums was wafted hither and thither. At last a subdued and gentle voice, which he had heard for some time past, induced him to turn his head, and he saw a charming darksome little woman sitting on the ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... summer: thrush and linnet sung their gladsome summer-lay; Through the fir trees' cooling vista rose the cataract's white spray; And the light blue smoke of even o'er the darksome forests fell— Rose and lingered like a lover loath to bid his love farewell; And in silence, Wistful silence, Shed its ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... like the lovely Star, whose light around my pathway shone, Amid this darksome vale of tears through which I journey on; No radiance had obscured the light, which round His throne doth dwell, And I wandered far away from Him, who ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... have this ability: kites and falcons, when anything is left unguarded, pounce and carry it off and retire into safety without being caught; or wolves, again, will hunt down any quarry left widowed of its guard, or thieve what they can in darksome corners. (22) In case a dog pursues and overtakes them, should he chance to be weaker the wolf attacks him, or if stronger, the wolf will slaughter (23) his quarry and make off. At other times, if the pack be strong ...
— The Cavalry General • Xenophon
... came in a drowsy voice from the sofa, but almost at the same moment the measured breath slowed down, the watch-lights blinked themselves out, and the little soul slid away into the darksome ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... instant both stood breathing hard, staring down into the darksome depths below. Then ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... her eager eyes she brings To ev'ry darksome crack, There was not one! and yet her things Were dropping off her back. She cut her pincushion in two, But no, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... mountain-ridges high, The tower-crown'd Corinth greets his eye; In Neptune's groves of darksome pine, He treads with shuddering awe divine; Nought lives around him, save a swarm Of CRANES, that still pursued his way. Lured by the South, they wheel and form In ominous ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... baby of some three months old, who winked and turned aside its little face from the too vivid light of day; because its existence, heretofore, had brought it acquaintance only with the grey twilight of a dungeon, or other darksome apartment of ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... first forged the terror-striking sword, His own fierce heart had tempered like its blade. What slaughter followed! Ah! what conflict wild! What swifter journeys unto darksome death! But blame not him! Ourselves have madly turned On one another's breasts that cunning edge Wherewith he meant mere blood of ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... shepherd so embellished With nature's pride and richest furniture! His looks do menace heaven and dare the gods; His fiery eyes are fix'd upon the earth, As if he now devis'd some stratagem, Or meant to pierce Avernus' darksome vaults [49] To pull the triple-headed dog ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... at some distance, he gazed for a time upon the scene beneath—the beautiful river, rich with the reflected tints of the western sky— the trees, which were already brightened to the eye, and saddened to the fancy, with the hue of autumn—and the darksome walls and towers of the feudal castle, from which, at times, flashed a glimpse of splendour, as some sentinel's arms caught and gave back a transient ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... in the old Puritan meeting-house, a seat of gloom, still throws its darksome shadow down through the years,—the stool of repentance. "Barbarous and cruel punishments" were forbidden by the statutes of the new colony, but on this terrible soul-rack the shrinking, sullen, or defiant form of some painfully humiliated man or woman sat, ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... wakes, And the towers of Hunaudaye Gleam like three phantom forms In the morning's sunlight ray; When night her darksome wing Folds round this desert waste, Shun all this cursed ground— Traveller flee ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... Assisi's convent gate The birds, God's poor who cannot wait, From moor and mere and darksome wood, Came flocking for their ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... down this original narrative from his own lips, my excellent old friend informed me, with cheerfulness not unmingled with the dignified pride characteristic of erudition, and of the possession of deep and darksome lore, that he also knew the story of Samson. And thus ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... is mocking thy gray hairs; Thou art descending to the darksome grave, Unhonored and unpitied, but by those Whose pride is passing by like thine, and sheds Like thine, a glare that fades before the sun Of truth, and shines but in the dreadful night That long has lowered above the ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... and, wondering, said, "Ah, modest Acorn! never to tell What was enclosed in its simple shell;— That the pride of the forest was folded up In the narrow space of its little cup!— And meekly to sink in the darksome earth, Which proves that nothing could hide her worth! And O, how many will tread on me, To come and admire the beautiful tree, Whose head is towering towards the sky, Above such a worthless thing as I! Useless and vain, a cumberer here, Have I been idling ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... Sciennes and Merchiston), all was free and open as far as Bruntsfield and the Borough Muir. But towards Holyrood and the College, what a warren! You entered by deep archways into secluded yards. Here was a darksome passage where murder might be (and no doubt had been) done. Here was an echoing gateway to a coaching inn, with a watchman ready to hit evil boys over the head with his clapper if they tried to ring his bell, the bell that announced the arrival ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... is, perhaps—at least in part—that the maxim has obtained currency, that one hour of sleep before midnight is worth two afterward. The comparison has probably been made between the quiet and darksome hours of evening and those which followed daybreak, when light, and music, and bustle conspire, as they should, to make us wakeful. No person can sleep as soundly and as effectually, when light reaches his closed eyes, and sounds strike his ears, as in darkness and silence. He may sleep, indeed, ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... lime-trees, ranged before this hallowed urn, Shoot forth with lively power at Spring's return; And be not slow a stately growth to rear Of pillars, branching off from year to year, Till ye have framed, at length, a darksome aisle, Like a recess within that sacred pile Where Reynolds, 'mid our country's noblest dead, In the last sanctity of fame ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... his lords the best: "The spot, methinks, we now behold Of which the holy hermit told, For, as his words described, I trace Each several feature of the place: Before us Chitrakuta shows, Mandakini beside us flows: Afar umbrageous woods arise Like darksome clouds that veil the skies. Now tread these mountain-beasts of mine On Chitrakuta's fair incline. The trees their rain of blossoms shed On table-lands beneath them spread, As from black clouds the floods ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... Rejoice in the gifts I have brought. Wreathed goddess fostered by Kapo— 5 Hail Kapo, of beauty resplendent! Great Kapo, of sea and land, The topmost stay of the net, Its lower stay and anchoring line. Kapo sits in her darksome covert; 10 On the terrace, at Mo'o-he-laia, Stands the god-tree of Ku, on Mauna-loa. God Kaulana-ula twigs now mine ear, His whispered suggestion to me is This payment, sacrifice, offering, 15 Tribute of praise to thee, O Kapo divine. Inspiring spirit in sleep, answer my call. Behold, ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... of Chaos, who so far didst come, From the old negro's darksome womb! Which when it saw the lovely child, The melancholly mass put on kind ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... with his usual freedom of interference, reminded him that Vich Ian Vohr's folk were nearly at the head of the column of march, which was still distant, and that 'they would gang very fast after the cannon fired.' Thus admonished, Waverley walked briskly forward, yet often easting a glance upon the darksome clouds of warriors who were collected before and beneath him. A nearer view, indeed, rather diminished the effect impressed on the mind by the more distant appearance of the army. The leading men of each clan were well armed with broadsword, target, and fusee, to which all added ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... death-halloo, Mustered his breath, his whinyard drew— But thundering as he came prepared, With ready arm and weapon bared, 140 The wily quarry shunned the shock, And turned him from the opposing rock; Then, dashing down a darksome glen, Soon lost to hound and Hunter's ken, In the deep Trossachs' wildest nook 145 His solitary refuge took. There, while close couched, the thicket shed Cold dews and wild-flowers on his head, He heard the ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... so spacious, so deeply secluded from the world's scorn, and so admirably in accordance with their thenceforward sunless fortunes. An alcove here might have suited Sir Walter Raleigh better than that darksome hiding-place communicating with the great chamber in the Tower, pacing from end to end of which he meditated upon his "History of the World." His track would here have been straight and narrow, indeed, and would therefore have lacked somewhat of the freedom that his intellect demanded; and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... cranny, and applied himself to his labours. Not yet was his spirit broken; not yet was his mind unhinged. As his candle burned in that gloomy dungeon in the silent watches of the night, so the fire of his genius shone anew in those darksome days of trial and persecution; and still he urged his afflicted Brethren to be true to the faith of their fathers, to hold fast the Apostles' Creed, and to look onward to the brighter day when once again their pathway would shine as the wings of a dove ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... the midst of this island will be situated a very lofty mountain of rugged ascent, with precipices and caverns, surrounded by a thick and darksome wood of tall trees, some of which will be seen to exhibit the appearance of the human form, covered with a rough bark, from the heads and arms of which will issue green boughs and branches, having suspended from them various trophies ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... flanked by squares of soiled note-paper upon which inexpert hands had traced the warning, not: "Abandon hope all ye who enter here," but: "Furnished rooms to let with board." And pursuing this grim trail of memory, whether he would or no—again he climbed, wearily at the end of a wearing day, a darksome well of a staircase up and up to an eyrie under the eaves, denominated in the terminology of landladies a "top hall back"—a cramped refuge haunted by pitiful ghosts of the hopes and despairs of its former tenants. And he remembered with reminiscently aching muscles the comfort ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... The darksome cave they enter, where they found The accursed man low sitting on the ground, Musing full sadly ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... not the little lord stumbled upon it, 'twas very like it had been there to this day without discovery. Well, no sooner do they see the door than they must needs open it, spite o' all my scolding, and peer within. 'Twas but a darksome hole, after all—a kind o' cave i' th' hill-side, which they did afterwards find out from thy grandfather was used in days gone by for concealing treasures in time of war. And indeed it seemed a safe place, for there were two rusty bolts as big as my arm, one o' th' ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... through which to manifest it. The physical conditions were intolerable. The hovels in which the people were living were wretched structures of rough logs, roofed with straw, with wooden chimneys and narrow and darksome interiors. They were patched with bark and rags; many were glad to lodge themselves in tents devised of fragments of drapery hung on a framework of boughs. The settlement was in that transition state between crude wilderness and pioneer town, when the appearance is most ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... parties in that now decayed mansion? I have dined in it—moi qui vous parle, I peopled the chamber with ghosts of the mighty dead. As we sat soberly drinking claret there with men of to-day, the spirits of the departed came in and took their places round the darksome board. The pilot who weathered the storm tossed off great bumpers of spiritual port; the shade of Dundas did not leave the ghost of a heeltap. Addington sat bowing and smirking in a ghastly manner, and would not be behindhand when the noiseless ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... lady, smiles, I feel as one who, lost in darksome wilds, Sees suddenly the sun in middle sky Shining upon him like a great glad eye. When ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... as those of the neighbour water. But cheerfulness rather than sadness is their prevailing note. Auld Maitland, the lay which James Hogg's mother repeated to Scott, has its scene on Leader side, and at the 'darksome town'—a misnomer in these days—of Lauder. Long before the time of that tough champion, St. Cuthbert and True Thomas had wandered and dreamed and sang by Leader. It was a Lord Lauderdale who rode to Traquair to court, after the older ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... loins like a man, for the darksome doors of Death stand open before thee, and this night thy Lord requires thy spirit!' said the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... is thine no more That hangs in the palace on Italy's shore; The tear-stained eyes where the shadow lies, Like a darksome cloud in the summer skies, Will tell thy story to men no more, For all untrue is the tale of yore; And the far-famed picture that hangs on the wall Is a painter's ...
— Love or Fame; and Other Poems • Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
... From the darksome fir-forest, to meet that array, Forth paces a gray-haired magician: To none but Perun did that sorcerer pray, Fulfilling the prophet's dread mission: His life he had wasted in penance and pain:— And beside that enchanter ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... into the Chitpur Road, with Amber a discreet shadow. So far the latter had been treading known ground, but a little later, when Pink Satin dived abruptly into a darksome alleyway to the right, drawing Amber after him as a child drags a toy on a string, the Virginian lost his bearings utterly and was thereafter helplessly dependent upon the flutter of Pink Satin, and unworried only so long as he could see him, in a fidget ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... of God's glory blinds her eyes, Up without wings she soareth to the skies, With silent aspiration seeks to rise, In dusky evening and in darksome night. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... rest upon the altar. Would that the Sabbath came twice as often, for the sake of that sorrowful old soul! There is an elderly man, also, who arrives in good season, and leans against the corner of the tower, just within the line of its shadow, looking downward with a darksome brow. I sometimes fancy that the old woman is the happier of the two. After these, others drop in singly, and by twos and threes, either disappearing through the doorway or taking their stand in its vicinity. At last, and ...
— Sunday at Home (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of this war, Caedmon goes on to relate how the wicked angels "into darkness urged them their darksome way." ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... Bear through this journey-land of wo, life's yoke. The light of such lives not in thine own lays; Such were not hers, that girl, so fond, so fair, Beneath whose image thou hast traced thy pray'r. Evil, and few, upon this darksome earth, Must be the days of all of mortal birth; Then why not mine? Sweet lady! wish again, Not more of joy to me, but less of pain; Calm slumber, when life's troubled hours are past, And with thy friendship cheer them while ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... trees which have their roots deep in the graveyard of the old Savoy Chapel formed, even in mid-October, a delicious screen of living, moving leaves. Far below, to his left, ran the river Thames, its rushing waters full of a mysterious, darksome beauty, and illumined, here and there, with the quivering reflection of shadowed white, green and red lights. Sherston in his heart often blessed the Sepelin scare which had banished the monstrous, flaring signs which, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... taunt, Careless the knight replied, "No bird whose feathers gaily flaunt Delights in cage to bide; Norham is grim and grated close, Hemmed in by battlement and fosse, And many a darksome tower; And better loves my lady bright To sit in liberty and light, In fair Queen Margaret's bower. We hold our greyhound in our hand, Our falcon on our glove; But where shall we find leash or band For dame that loves ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... and felt almost inclined to cry; but, Dick at the last moment, when the search was just about to be given up, raked out a perfect specimen from a hole in the rock-work beneath one of the buttresses that was nearly awash with the water—a darksome dungeon, isolated from the vulgar herd of barnacles, and common but kindred anemones with which the stuck-up sea cucumber was too proud ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the year thereafter A muster called'st thou out; When thou ploughed'st the seas With sea-steeds full splendid. On darksome billow lay The dragons precious, and uneasy The host thereof saw off land laden were the war-ships of ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... fared on account of the spear-armed Trojans, Pledged to the combat; they unto me have in nowise a harm done; Never have they, of a truth, come lifting my horses or oxen; Never in deep-soiled Phthia, the nurser of heroes, my harvests Ravaged, they; for between us is numbered full many a darksome Mountain, ay, therewith too the stretch of the windy sea-waters. O hugely shameless! thee did we follow to hearten thee, justice Pluck from the Dardans for him, Menelaos, thee too, thou dog-eyed! Whereof little thy thought is, nought whatever thou ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the darksome crypt I left so late, Whose only altar is its rusted grate,— Sepulchral, rayless, joyless as it seems, Shamed by the glare of May's refulgent beams,— While the dim seasons dragged their shrouded train, Its ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... made morn through the darksome gate, He was 'ware of a leper, crouched by the same, Who begged with his hand and moaned as he sate; And a loathing over Sir Launfal came; The sunshine went out of his soul with a thrill, The flesh ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... hurried homewards, leaving the lime-burner and little Joe to deal as they might with their unwelcome guest. Save for these three human beings, the open space on the hillside was a solitude, set in a vast gloom of forest. Beyond that darksome verge, the firelight glimmered on the stately trunks and almost black foliage of pines, intermixed with the lighter verdure of sapling oaks, maples, and poplars, while here and there lay the gigantic corpses of dead trees, decaying on the leaf-strewn soil. And it seemed to little Joe—a timorous ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... beard that you could discover no symptom of a mouth, except when he opened it to speak, or to put in a morsel of food. Then, indeed, you suddenly became aware of a cave hidden behind the impervious and darksome shrubbery. There could be no doubt who this gentleman and lady were. Any child would have recognized them at a glance. It was Bluebeard and a new wife (the loveliest of the series, but with already a mysterious gloom overshadowing her fair young brow) travelling ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... this darksome hole, and the wall closed behind them. Then, taking her by the arm, he turned first to the right, next to the left, opened a door with a key which he carried, and, behold, they stood in a beautifully furnished room well lighted with lamps, for it seemed to have no windows. "Wait here," he ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... And Discord with a thousand various mouths. T' whom Satan turning boldly, thus. Ye Powers And Spirits of this nethermost Abyss, Chaos and Ancient Night, I come no Spie, 970 With purpose to explore or to disturb The secrets of your Realm, but by constraint Wandring this darksome desart, as my way Lies through your spacious Empire up to light, Alone, and without guide, half lost, I seek What readiest path leads where your gloomie bounds Confine with Heav'n; or if som other place From your Dominion won, th' Ethereal King Possesses lately, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... her myrtle groweth; Much she loves, because she much hath borne; Love-led, through the darksome way she goeth— On to meet him in ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... excited for a year after my death, and then would never, in all probability, have pointed to Bartram as the scene of the crime. The weeds would have grown over me, and I should have lain in that deep grave where the corpse of Madame de la Rougierre was unearthed in the darksome quadrangle of Bartram-Haugh. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... nature herself doth sprinkle the bridal path with flowers;"—or, when there fell a darksome shower, Katherine would press close to her lover's ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... Vishnu on the left, with flowers set before the one, while incense burns before the other. Somewhere in the darkness an Oriental woman will be seated on the ground, twanging on a sarabar, and now and then crooning a chant of invitation to come and share in darksome rites. You will thus be "worked up" to a sense of the mysterious before you pass the third gate of privilege into the ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... age that thus hath fool'd itself, and will —Spite of thy teeth and mine—persist so still. Let's sit then at this fire, and while we steal A revel in the town, let others seal, Purchase or cheat, and who can, let them pay, Till those black deeds bring on the darksome day. Innocent spenders we! a better use Shall wear out our short lease, and leave th' obtuse Rout to their husks; they and their bags at best Have cares in earnest; we care ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... who are forced to stay on earth in a living death, I ask the strong to help us all. Blighted lives, wrecked intellects, wasted brilliancy, poisoned morality, rotted will—all these mark the road that the King of Evils takes in his darksome progress. Out of the depths I have called for aid and received it, and now I ask aid for others, and I shall ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... fell on darksome days: March Fourth was blustery and sleety; The French behaved in horrid ways Until John Jay drew up a treaty. Came the Eleventh Amendment, too, Providing that—but ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... herein the germ of understanding. "The Firefly" meant to boom itself on its Swiss correspondence; but even that darksome piece of journalistic enterprise did not explain the princely munificence of the hundred pounds. At last, when she calmed down sufficiently to be capable of connected thought, she saw that "mountaineering" implied the hire of guides, and that "society" meant frocks. Of course it was intended ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... jailer and the guards, Theseus never knew. But, however that might be, Ariadne opened all the doors, and led him forth from the darksome prison into the ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... who hath a beard * Allah to useless length unroll'd: 'Tis like a certain[FN272] winter night, * Longsome and darksome, drear ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... adage —will mew —, endow a college or a Cataract, the sounding Cataracts, silent Cathay, cycle of Cato, big with the fate of Caucasus, thinking on the frosty Cause, hear me for my Caution, cold pausing Cave, they enter the darksome Caviare to the general Celestial, rosy-red Chaff, hid in two bushels of Chalice, the ingredients of our poisoned Chamber where the good man meets his fate Chance that oft decides the fate of monarchs —to fall below Demosthenes ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... down-bent, and pondering footstep slow; And to himself conclude: "The best I can For the great world, is, just the best I can For this my world. The influence will go In widening circles to the darksome lanes In London's self." When a philanthropist Said pompously: "With your great gifts you ought To work for the great world, not spend yourself On common labours like a common man;" He answered him: "The world is in God's hands. This part he gives to me; for which my past, Built up on loves inherited, ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... there that I should do, Lingering in this darksome vale? Proud and mighty, fair to view, Are our schemes, and yet they fail, Like the sand before the wind, That no power of man can ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Principles; the Unknown Father, or Supreme and Eternal God, living in the centre of the Light, happy in the perfect purity of His being; the other, eternal Matter, that inert, shapeless, darksome mass, which they considered as the source of all evils, the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... them was alive with ghostly legend. They had seen the lights dance across Deer Garth Ghyll, and had heard the wail that came from Clark's Loup. They were not above trembling at the mention of these mysteries when the moon was flying across a darksome sky, when the wind moaned about the house, and they were gathered around the ingle nook. They had few channels of communication with the great world without. The pack-horse pedler was their swiftest newsman; the pedler on foot was ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... compartment in succession, moving forward, was that allotted to the seamen of the ship. Here there was a characteristic difference in the scene. Having reached the middle of the darksome berth without the inmates being aware of the intrusion, the anxious engineer was somewhat reassured and comforted to find that, although they talked of bad weather and cross accidents of the sea, yet the conversation was ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... its delicate blossoms from their sheltering covert of dark-green leaves, mingled with the breath of the snowy-petaled dogwood, and the blue violets that were bedded in the rich moss on the banks of the little stream. The brook itself went singing on its way as it wound through the darksome forest, and fell with a plash, and a murmur, over the huge stones that would have turned ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... and spirit; to conquer there, and afterwards to take Constantinople, was the hope, the bourne, the fulfilment of my ambition. This enthusiasm is now spent, I know not why; I seem to myself to be entering a darksome gulph; the ardent spirit of the army is irksome to me, the rapture of ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... frowning aspect awe the trembling World. Destruction, bursting from thy sudden blaze Hath taught the Birds to tremble at the sound; And Man himself, thy terror's boasted lord, Within the blacken'd hollow of thy tube, Affrighted sees the darksome shades of Death. Not only mourning groves, but human tears, The weeping Widow's tears, the Orphan's cries, Sadly deplore that e'er thy powers were known. Yet let thy Advent be the Soldier's song, No longer doom'd to grapple with the Foe With Teeth and Nails—When close in view, and in Each-other's ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... passage and down-stairs. Having reached the first floor, he unbolted a door which led into the cellar. The stairs and passage were illuminated by lamps that hung from the ceiling and were accustomed to burn during the night. Now, however, we were entering darksome and ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... mouth of a narrow and darksome byway flashed into view. Kirkwood threw wide the door, and leaped, trusting to the night to hide his stratagem, to luck to save his limbs. Neither failed him; in a twinkling he was on all fours in the mouth of the alley, and as he picked himself up, the second fiacre passed, Calendar himself poking ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... bright who me defend, Enshadow me with curved wing, And keep me in the darksome night Till dawn another day ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... the Carthage Queene, And lov'd the Troian knight, That wandring many coasts had seene, And many a dreadfull fight. As they a-hunting road, a show'r Drove them in a loving bower, Down to a darksome cave: Where Aenaeas with his charmes Lock't Queene Dido in his armes And had what he ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... me, only love me, for I have no world but thee, And darksome clouds are in my sky—'tis woman's destiny; But let them frown—I heed them not—no fear can they impart, If thou art near, with smiles to bend hope's ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... I at nightfall had gone forth Alone, and in a darksome place Under some mulberry-trees I found A little pool; and in short space, With all the water that was there I fill'd my pitcher, and stole home Unseen; and having drink to spare, I hid the can behind the door, And went up on the roof ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... the darksome brow Who wanderest here so free?' "'Oh, I'm one that will walk the green green woods, Nor ever ask leave of ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the savage den, And sometimes from the darksome shade, And sometimes starting up at once ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... by the presence of a superior power." And this happens not only in bodily, but also in imaginary vision. Wherefore it is written (Gen. 15:12) that "when the sun was setting, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a great and darksome horror seized upon him." But by being thus disturbed man is not harmed to such an extent that therefore he ought to forego the vision of an angel. First because from the very fact that man is raised above himself, in which matter his dignity is concerned, his inferior ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... there were murmurings and curses deep and low In darksome public-houses in the road of Pimlico, And a general impression that it was not safe to cross The temper of that caterer, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... and study was fully correspondent to, yea, went beyond his desire, nevertheless, as thou mayest well understand, the time then was not so proper and fit for learning as it is at present, neither had I plenty of such good masters as thou hast had. For that time was darksome, obscured with clouds of ignorance, and savouring a little of the infelicity and calamity of the Goths, who had, wherever they set footing, destroyed all good literature, which in my age hath by the divine goodness been restored unto its former light and dignity, and ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the evening wept the maiden, Through the darksome night lamented, 300 On the rocks that fringed the margin, Where a bay spread wide before her. At the earliest dawn of morning, As she gazed from off a headland, Just beyond she saw three maidens, Bathing there amid the waters, Aino made the fourth among then, ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... though her brow be changed and cold, Her sweet eyes closed for ever? What though the stone—the darksome mould Our ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... with the dropping water, he filled up the glass and drank it off. Then he sat for a long time in bemused silence, while I, perched on my chair, reflected on his great goodness and wondered how I should help him up the darksome stairs of our hotel ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... wildest and most striking aspects. There are stern summits, enveloped in cloud, and stretching heavenwards; huge broad crests, heathy and verdant, or torn by fissures and broken by the storms; deep ravines, jagged, precipitate, and darksome; and valleys sweetly reposing amidst the sublimity of the awful solitude. There are dark craggy mountains around the Grey-Mare's-Tail, echoing to the roar of its stupendous cataract; and romantic and beautiful green hills, and inaccessible heights, surrounding ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... answer, that it could not blow long in this way, and that we must soon have better weather. The next berth in succession, moving forward in the ship, was that allotted for the seamen. Here the scene was considerably different. Having reached the middle of this darksome berth without its inmates being aware of any intrusion, the writer had the consolation of remarking that, although they talked of bad weather and the cross accidents of the sea, yet the conversation was carried on in that sort of tone and manner which bespoke an ease and composure of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Wi-no-na Ska[V] they called her, She of all the maidens fairest. In the tangles of her tresses Sunbeams lingered, pale and yellow; In her eyes the limpid blueness Of the noonday sky was mirrored. And the squaws of darksome features Smiled upon her fair young beauty; Felt their woman hearts within them Warming to the Pale-Face maiden. And the braves, who scorned all weakness, Listened to her artless prattle, While their savage natures softened, Of the ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten
... in the sea-vessel with my brave warriors, That I alone would win thy folk's deliverance, Or in the fight would fall fast in the demon's grip. Needs must I now perform knightly deeds in this hall, Or here must meet my doom in darksome night." ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... a Railroad, On which you children speed To a land of light and plenty, Or a land of darksome need; And soon you'll come to a meadow, Where two tracks mark the way, But they'll run close up alongside For many and ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... a man's hand, that, looked at from within, was on the right of the stone. Nada sat herself so that this ray struck full on her, for she loved light, and without it she would pine as flowers do. There she sat and thought in the darksome cave, and was filled with fear and sorrow. And while she brooded thus, suddenly the ray went out, and she heard a noise as of some beast that smells at prey. She looked, and in the gloom she saw the sharp nose and grinning ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... with its elastic, leaping flames, had bepainted the darkening avenues of the russet woods with long, fibrous strokes of red and yellow, as with a brush scant of color. The autumnal air was dank, with subtle shivers. A precipice was not far distant on the western side, and there the darksome forest fell away, showing above the massive, purple mountains a section of sky in a heightened clarity of tint, a suave, saffron hue, with one horizontal bar of vivid vermilion that lured the eye. The old mountaineer gazed retrospectively at it as ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... I heard beneath me the quickening pulse-beat of the town. The watch hurried here and there, hectoring, threatening, and commanding. But, in spite of all, men gathered as soon as their backs were turned in the alleys and street openings. Clusters of heads showed black for a moment in some darksome entry, cried "U-g-g-hh!" with a hateful sound, and vanished ere the steel-clad veterans of the Duke's guard could come upon them. It was like the hide-and-seek which I used to play with Boldo, my blood-hound ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... with the secrets of the ocean of life; those love-letters that pass from hand to hand of a thousand lovers that never meet; those honeycombs of dreams; those orchards of knowledge; those still-beating hearts of the noble dead; those mysterious signals that beckon along the darksome pathways of the past; voices through which the myriad lispings of the earth find perfect speech; oracles through which its mysteries call like voices in moonlit woods; prisms of beauty; urns stored with all the sweets of all the summers of time; immortal nightingales ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... now awake out of her dreames, And her fayre eyes, like stars that dimmed were With darksome cloud, now shew theyr goodly beams More bright then Hesperus his head doth rere. Come now, ye damzels, daughters of delight, Helpe quickly her to dight: But first come ye fayre houres, which were begot In Joves sweet paradice of ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... that resting place For him who claimed a throne: His canopy, devoid of grace, The rude, rough beams alone; The heather couch his only bed,— Yet well I ween had slumber fled From couch of eider down! Through darksome night till dawn of day, Absorbed in wakeful thought he lay Of Scotland and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... Sigurd aforetime, how the foes of God he slew; How forth from the darksome desert the Gold of the Waters he drew; How he wakened Love on the Mountain, and wakened Brynhild the Bright, And dwelt upon Earth for a season, and shone in all men's sight. Ye have heard of the ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... hand in hand, Went wandering up and down; But never more could see the man Approaching from the town. Their pretty lips with blackberries Were all besmeared and dyed; And when they saw the darksome night, They sat them ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... since the morning he followed the hounds into the fatal cave, but his story was remembered by the firesides, and sometimes, even yet, the herdboy watching his cattle in the fields hears the tuneful cry of hounds, and follows it till it leads him to a darksome cave, and as fearfully he listens to the sound becoming fainter and fainter he hears the clatter of hoofs over the stony floor, and to this day the cave bears the name of the prince who entered ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... many a dreary year Must pass away ere the buds appear: Many a night of darksome sorrow Yield to the light of a joyless morrow, Ere birds again, on the clothed trees, Shall fill the branches with melodies. She will dream of meadows with wakeful streams; Of wavy grass in the sunny beams; Of hidden wells that soundless spring, Hoarding their joy as a holy thing; Of founts that ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... the guide, now also afoot, but still retaining hold of his horse, which he was conducting towards the crack in the cliff, with all his energies forcing it to follow him; for the animal moved reluctantly, as though suspecting danger inside the darksome cleft. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... question was of countrymen and ancestors. The work was for this reason entirely remodelled and rewritten in order to furnish fuller particulars on our authors' lives and works, and to extract from their darksome place of retirement such forgotten heroes as Zelauto, Sorares, Parismus, who had, some of them, once upon a time, been known to fame, and had played their part in the toilsome task of bringing the modern English ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... very nervous at first, when she was left alone in charge of the sick room, but gradually she became accustomed to the darksome silent room, and rejoiced in finding herself less awkward and stupid than she had imagined herself to be. At home it was Kate who was always at hand when anyone was ill, Kate who entertained callers, and Kate who always knew the right thing to do or say; while Ella believed ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... is yelling, Loud roaring through the bending tree, There's sorrow in man's darksome dwelling, ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie |
