"Starlit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her? What danger could there be in this quiet, starlit night for Josephine? A sudden chill ran through Philip. Did Jean mistrust HIM? Was it possible that Josephine had secretly expressed a fear which made the Frenchman watch over her while she slept? As silently as he had approached he moved away until he stood in the sand at the shore ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... that concerned him not soon brought to him the same stoicism that philosophy gives the strong; and after the first surprise, his eye quietly settled on his employer. St. John rose eagerly from the sofa, on which he had been contemplating the starlit treetops of ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... zoological garden, and we had some splendid shooting. But as Yvette and I spent two glorious months on this same plain, I will tell in future chapters how, in long morning horseback rides and during silent starlit nights, we learned to ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... carriage rattled on and on through the shining, starlit night for endless hours, it seemed ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... doctor and cure. My master was smoking his porcelain pipe, as usual, but strangely silent. A faint circle of light came from the open ground-floor window of the cafe. The white road gleamed dimly, and beyond the hushed valley the hills loomed vague against a black, starlit sky. In the lighted room a few peasants from neighbouring farms drank their sour white wine and discussed the death in low voices. In other circumstances my master would have joined them under pretext of getting nearer the Heart of Life, ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... see the westbound train through almost every day—had started straightway for Laramie behind the swiftest team owned by the quartermaster's department, while another, in relay, awaited him at the Chugwater nearly fifty miles out. Driving steadily through the starlit night, he should reach the old frontier fort by dawn at the latest, and what news would Dade have to send him there? Not a word had he uttered to either the officers who respectfully greeted, or reporters ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... long remembered in Chamonix. July passed with a procession of cloudless days; valley and peak basked in sunlight. August came, and on a hot starlit night in the first week of that month Chayne sat opposite to Michel Revailloud in the balcony of a cafe which overhangs the Arve. Below him the river tumbling swiftly amidst the boulders flashed in the darkness like white fire. He sat facing the street. Chamonix ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... Pendennis was gone to bed at Fairoaks, and wondering whether her dearest Arthur was at rest after his journey. At this time Laura, too, was awake. And at this time yesterday night, as the coach rolled over silent commons, where cottage windows twinkled, and by darkling woods under calm starlit skies, Pen was vowing to reform and to resist temptation, and his heart was at home. Meanwhile the farce was going on very successfully, and Mrs. Leary, in a hussar jacket and braided pantaloons, was enchanting the audience with her archness, her lovely ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... she awakened, her muscles stiff and aching from the pressure of her weight upon the rock. The girl lay for a minute wondering where she was. Above was a narrow bar of starlit sky. The walls of her pit of refuge were within touch of her finger tips. Then memory of the storm and her escape from it flashed ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... France—and waited there for the battalion to form up. It was a beautiful summer night, the square tower of the cathedral and the Moorish spire of the Hotel de Ville forming perfect silhouettes against the starlit sky. ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... for a moment to the starlit heaven, and then continued his brisk walk. His way lay through winding alleys; over bridges so narrow that two men could not pass abreast; through passages where rogues lurked, and repulsive faces were thrust grinning into his own. But he knew the ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... night be starlit the shadows are denser, the outlook narrower, the mystery deeper; but what a vision overhangs the world and makes the night sublime with the poetry of God's thought visible to all eyes! Who does not feel the passage of divine dreams over ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... felt in that moment to bear the delay cheerfully, and determined as he was to cast no additional weight on his mother's heart, it was not so easy to compose his thoughts, as he lay in the dusky, starlit bedroom up-stairs. The events of the day, and their recent consequences, had moved his strong nature to its very foundations. A chaos of joy, wonder, doubt, and dread surged through him. Over and over he recalled the sweet ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... on the stair, where she lay, unconscious of all that succeeded, until she found herself raised in the arms of a mob who had entered the house. And how came they to have entered? In a way characteristically dreadful. The night was starlit; the patrols had perambulated the street without noticing anything suspicious, when two foot passengers, who were following in their rear, observed a dark-colored stream traversing the causeway. One of them, at the same instant tracing the stream backward with his eyes, observed that it flowed ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... sore, but with fresh, white bandages on his blistered hands. He asked and received permission to light a cigarette, and then dropped wearily into a seat near the Princess, who sat upon the stone railing. She was leaning back against the column and looking dreamily out across the lowlands toward the starlit sea. The never-ceasing rush of the mountain stream came plainly up to them from below; now and then a cool dash of spray floated to their faces from ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... silently for a minute, hand still in hand, looking far out over the moonlit waters, each conscious of the trend of the other's thoughts—the beating of the other's heart. The deck was deserted by all save their two selves—they two alone in the big starlit universe. ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... and, gazing up at the starlit heavens, wandered off into dreams of the life he would like to lead but from which he seemed inexorably shut out. The seriousness of life was striking deeper than ever into Joe's heart, and he lay silent, thinking hard. A mumble of heavy voices came ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... he was out on the starlit road to Lauderdale. As he rode he thought, not of the Botetourt Resolutions, nor of Fauquier Cary, nor of Allan Gold, nor of the supper table at Three Oaks, nor of a case which he must fight through at the court house three days hence, but of Judith Cary. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... not believe his eyes. And yet there could be no mistake. Something WAS crawling up the sheer face of the cliff, a bulging shadow dimly outlined against the starlit sky. ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... to the tilt an hour before daybreak, after watching Ed and Bill disappear down the trail in the still, bitter cold of the starlit morning, Bob remarked: ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... now presented itself was a most strange, extraordinary one. The night was clear and cold, and the wintry moon was sailing tranquilly through the blue and starlit heavens, flooding here and there the sea of upturned faces with its mellow light, or casting the deep shadow of intervening houses over the black mass, while the street looked as if a sudden snow-storm had carpeted it with white. The men in the windows and those below were white ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... last to her rooms. On the dressing-table waxlights burned, but the bedroom was unlit. She seated herself by the window and looked out at the starlit sky, at the darkly-waving trees of the park. "And this is my welcome home," she thought, "to find in my husband's house my rival and enemy, whose first look, whose first words are insults. She is mistress here, not I. ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... frosty, starlit night. White and stern was the face which he turned upward for a moment to the sky. He paused for a second in the ray of candle-light that gleamed through Puddock's window-shutter, and glanced on the pale dial ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... a North German Lloyd steamer quitted Southampton for Algiers, bearing among its passengers Priam and Alice. It was a rough starlit night, and from the stern of the vessel the tumbled white water made a pathway straight to receding England. Priam had come to love the slopes of Putney with the broad river at the foot; but he showed what I think ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... the mountain sweetness, the unpolluted breezes and wide perspectives of the heights, the dreams of the starlit homeward ride, the triumph in man's love, was shining forth from Aurora, with her fresh sunburn, her untidied hair, and softly luminous eyes. Estelle felt herself suddenly on the point of ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... miles away across the moor. It was a bright starlit night, and Antony, who knew the moor well, had no difficulty in making his way at a good pace along the mossy tracks. Presently he gave a little cry of ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... the mist of curls on her temples stirred gently in the scented breeze that blew over the garden. All the sweetness of the world was gathered into the little space that she filled. Every impulse of joy he had ever felt—memories of autumn roads, of starlit mountains, of summer fields where bees drifted in golden clouds—all these were packed like honey into that single minute of love. And with the awakening of passion, there came the exaltation, the consciousness of illimitable ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... roadside margin of deep shadow crept the figure of a man with a rifle in his hand. It was a starlit night with a sickle of new moon, neither bright nor yet densely dark, so that shapes were opaquely visible but not ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... dinghy put off from the reef, the sculls broke the starlit waters and great shaking circles of light made rhythmical answer to the slow and steady creak of the thole pins against the leather. He tied up to the aoa, saw that the sculls were safely shipped; ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... starlit night. Jack and the driver sat on the front seat. They had taken the back seat out, and my little boy and I sat in the bottom of the wagon, with the hard cushions to lean against through the night. I suppose we were drowsy with sleep; at all events, the talk about ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... of ink: Boy prodigals are lost in wine, By night where white and red lights blink, The eyes of Death, in Buffalo. And only twenty miles away Are starlit rocks ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... the tumbled bed, and she saw the paper lying on the floor and the candle flickering, it seemed as though she had returned from a strange adventure. For a long time she remained sitting on the edge of the bed, gazing through the window into the bright, starlit night, and her soul was filled ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... Heaven and Earth, and bowed before the Supreme Ruler, praying for the millions of his people to whom he stood as father. A magnificent conception! The mind of man could scarcely rise higher in ethics of worship, as in solemn splendour the beasts are slain, and the prostrate Emperor under the starlit sky calls upon the unknown god. Confucius seemed to realise the unbridgeable chasm between the offender and his judge when he said: "If a man have offended against heaven, there is none to whom he can ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... warm night or the early starlit morn. During the day he rested: happy if he could recline by the side of some charitable well, shaded by a palm-tree, or frighten a gazelle from its resting-place among the rough bushes of some wild rocks. Were these resources ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... against the wall, Cummins put one of his long arms about the boy's shoulders and led him to the door, where they stood looking out upon the grim desolation of the forest that rose black and silent against the starlit background of the sky. High above the thick tops of the spruce rose the lone tree over the grave, like a dark finger pointing up into the night, and ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... cloudy, but when I got to the roof it was clear starlight. The wind blew through the electric wires strung across and set them singing. The occasional bleat of a belated automobile on the drive below came up to me raucously. The tent gleamed, a starlit ghost of itself, and the boxwoods bent in the breeze. I went over to the parapet and leaned my elbows on it. I had done the same thing so often before; I had carried all my times of stress so infallibly to that particular place, that instinctively ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... when you are secret and separate in your little oblong world, safe between sheets, pull up the blinds on the great window a few inches and leave them so. Thus, as you lie, you can view the dark procession of woods and hills, and mingle the broken hours of railway slumber with glimpses of a wild starlit landscape. The country retains individuality, and yet puts on romance, especially the rough, shaggy region between Port Arthur and Winnipeg. For four hundred miles there is hardly a sign that humanity exists on the earth's face, only ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... the wheels grate on the pebbles. She rushed to the window; but that beloved face was not visible. Maltravers had drawn the blinds, and thrown himself back to indulge his grief. A moment more, and even the vehicle that bore him away was gone. And before her were the flowers, and the starlit lawn, and the playful fountain, and the bench where they had sat in such heartfelt and serene delight. He was gone; and often, oh, how often, did Alice remember that his last words had been uttered in estranged tones—that his last ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... He glanced up at the open sky, for he was breasting the surface of a small lake. "Good!" The pirogue slipped into another bayou at the upper end of the lagoon. The shadows here seemed thicker than ever after the starlit lake. ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... horizon for the first time in eight days, but his depth was too slight to make any darkness visible. I was quite tired of the unending daylight, and would willingly have exchanged the pomp of the arctic midnight for the starlit darkness of home. We were confused by the loss of night; we lost the perception of time. One is never sleepy, but simply tired, and after a sleep of eight hours by sunshine, wakes up as tired as ever. His sleep at last ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... emanated one from the other, their vitality increased, and the personality of each became more clearly defined; the last generation included none but beings of an original character and clearly marked individuality. Anu, the sunlit sky by day, the starlit firmament by night; Inlil-Bel, the king of the earth; Ea, the sovereign of the waters and the personification of wisdom.*** Each of them duplicated himself, Anu into Anat, Bel into Belit, Ea into Damkina, and united ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... pale and worn, he kept his deck, And peered through darkness. Ah, that night Of all dark nights! And then a speck— A light! A light! A light! It grew, a starlit flag unfurled! It grew to be Time's burst of dawn: He gained a world; he gave that world Its ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... as a pond, except where, with a low moan, it heaved up and beat against Carn Du, falling back with an angry hiss as if of disappointment, while all above looked calm and dark and starlit. ...
— A Terrible Coward • George Manville Fenn
... sunset apart even from colour. The ridges of pines and cypresses soon remain the only distinguishable thing in the valleys, pulling themselves (as one feels it) rapidly up, like great prehistoric shapes of Saurians. Soon the sky only and mountains will exist. Then begins the time, before the starlit night comes to say its say, when everything grows drowsy, a little vague, and the blurred mountains go to sleep in the smoke of dusk. Then only, due west, the great Carrara peaks stand out against the sanguine sky, long pointed curves ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... readiness for our return run it was long after dark and the men were exhausted. I managed to get some tea, but naturally no sugar or milk. The strong steaming brew served to wash down the scanty supply of cold bully beef. Fortunately it was a brilliant starlit night, but even so it was difficult to avoid ditches and washouts, and the road seemed interminable. Not long after we left we ran into a couple of armored cars that had been detailed to bring the rescued aviators back, after they had been reoutfitted and supplied as far as our limited resources ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... the passengers had descended from the day coach to stretch their limbs, and with a desire to avoid them Wade walked toward the rear of the train. Daylight dies hard up here in the mountains, but at last twilight held the world, a clear, starlit twilight. Overhead the vault of heaven was hung with deep blue velvet, pricked out with a million diamonds. Up the slope the camp-fire glowed ruddily. In the west the smouldering sunset embers had cooled to ashes of dove-gray and steel, against which Sierra Blanca crouched, a grim, black ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... think so. He lingered, charmed, until quarter past eleven o'clock, at which hour Mrs. Weyland, in the room above, began to let the tongs and poker fall about with unmistakable significance; and went out into the starlit night radiant with the certainty that his heart, after long wandering, had found its true mate ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... river, Brick went on until the lights of the town were some distance behind. By the dim glow of the starlit sky he could see that the beach sloped upward to a pretty steep bluff, and that tall stacks of lumber lay in all directions. The sullen slapping of the waves drowned ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... had been to Harrogate, dined at the Majestic, and returned. After taking the car to the garage, I went out for a turn along the Esplanade, in order to stretch my legs. It was midnight, brightly starlit, and silent save for the low soughing of the waves upon the shore. I had lit my pipe and walked nearly to the Holbeck Gardens, at the extreme end of the South Cliff, when, in the darkness, I discerned two figures sitting upon a seat in the shadow. One was a man, and ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... the Djouad and Marabouts around never spoke in his presence unless their lord bade them, and the Chasseur was stretched motionless, his elbow resting on a cushion of Morocco fabric, and his eyes looking outward at the restless, changing movement of the firelit, starlit camp. ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... we may see Kinchinjunga is in its aspect at dawn. It will be still night—a starlit night. The phantom snowy range and the fairy forms of the mountains will be bathed in that delicate yellow light the stars give forth. The far valley depths will be hidden in the sombrest purple. Overhead the sky will be glittering ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... something more than kindness. And still he had never told her of his love. He must tell her even this very night while the moon rode high in the heavens and all the small differences between human beings seemed lost in the vast starlit stillness. He knew well that by the relentless glare of the daylight his own insignificance would be cruelly conspicuous in the presence of her splendor; his scruples would revive, and his ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... interesting story, with lots of uplifting thoughts in it." The thoughts might be uplifting to Almena, but they did not elevate my spirits. As for the story—well, the hero was a young gentleman who was poor but tremendously clever and handsome, and the heroine had eyes "as dark and deep as starlit pools." The poor but beautiful person met the pool-eyed one at a concert, where he sat, "his whole soul transfigured by the music," and she had been "fascinated in spite of herself" by the look on his face. I read as far as that and ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... an order in which to classify external objects will be the man to make scientific discoveries. It will never be he who, without preparation and order, wanders dreaming among plants or beneath the starlit sky. ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... pull across the starlit waters of the harbor was peculiarly refreshing and restful after the thrilling events of the day. Irene said with a laugh that it was almost worth while being kidnapped for the sake of becoming a heroine, and Mr. Fenshawe yielded ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... beds that night looking at the starlit sky—such a sky as is found only on these high plateaus—we discovered a comet directly above us. An astronomer would have enjoyed our opportunities for observing the heavens. No doubt this comet had been heralded far and wide, but we doubt if any ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... shadow of a starlit night he saw the figure he had been waiting for glide out of the glitter of the hotel lights. He followed it ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... later, pushing on in the starlit night, we heard ahead the sullen boom of waters in turmoil. For a half-hour, as we proceeded, the sound increased, until it seemed close under our prow. We knew there was no cataract in the entire lower portion of the river; and yet, only from a waterfall had ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... hand and Bartley opened the big gate. As they walked down the dim, starlit road they were startled by the advent of a yellow dog that bounded from the ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... was restless, far from content. There was something lacking. She grew distrait, monosyllabic, sat for long intervals staring absently into the gloom beyond the windowpane. The Limited was ripping through forested land. She could see now and then tall treetops limned against the starlit sky. The ceaseless roar of the trucks and the buzz of conversation in the car irritated her. At half after eight she called the porter and had him arrange her section for the night. And she got into bed, thankful to be by ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... drove away through the starlit night, a costly robe protecting her from the chill of the evening, Celeste at hand for instant service, Kingston guiding the monster car, she looked back over her shoulder at the little house outlined against the sky and ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... first few miles they sped on in silence with clasped hands, the night wind rushing against their faces, and no sound coming to their ears but the occasional whine of the hungry hyenas, prowling over the stony, starlit hills. In the man's breast swelled an exaltation beyond all words: it lifted him up so, that his feet seemed flying over the rugged ground without touching it; the night-wind filled his veins with fire: his brain seemed alight and ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... the streets, choosing the by-ways rather than the thoroughfares. The air was frosty, the December sky clear and starlit, above the blue or purple haze, pierced with lights, that filled the lower air; through which the college fronts, the distant spires and domes showed vaguely—as beautiful "suggestions"—"notes"—from which all detail had disappeared. He was soon on ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is condemned to die in all palaces," he would say,—"It is only in the glorious world of Nature, under the sunlit or starlit expanse of heaven, that the god in us can live; and it was not without some subtle cause of intended instruction to mankind that the Saviour always taught His followers ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... puffed in silence, looking out into the starlit night with its beauty of dim outline and mysterious shadow. Mainwaring ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... enjoyed the quiet, starlit nights before the moon was up; for the moon dazzled the eyes in the rarefied air where they flew, whereas the stars gave just enough light to steer by without making ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... homeward together, under the starlit canopy, and Clemence thought that, whatever might come to her, there was one whose pure affection ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... Overhead the starlit heavens glistened, brooding and mysterious, looking down with luminous, loving eyes upon these humble sons of men doing a good deed, from the impulse of simple, generous hearts, as upon that other Christmas morning, long ago, when the Jewish shepherds, guarding ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... the lighted windows. As they hurried along in their airy dresses, they were pulling off long, hot gloves, and saying, still under their breath, "Oh, isn't it good to get out?" They were laughing softly, and breathing deep breaths of the warm summer air, and looking up at the starlit sky. ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... of the favourable breeze which was now blowing, and the smooth water which would render our voyage easy. We lost sight of the Cowlitz just as the sun sunk in the western wave. We were now gliding calmly over the starlit sea—the beautiful firmament above us shining with a splendour peculiar to the torrid zone. The boats sailed well, and kept ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... brine from his tired limbs, and sat down for a time, in a spot where a fallen boulder sheltered his naked body from the cool morning wind. In a few moments he rose, flexed his muscles and peered through the starlit darkness for a way up the cliff behind the beach. He found it impossible to ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... vulgar sun; oh, rare, To wheel from the wood to the window where A day-worn sleeper is dreaming of care, And perch on the sill and straightly stare Through his visions; rare, to sail Aslant with the hill and a-curve with the vale, — To flit down the shadow-shot-with-gleam, Betwixt hanging leaves and starlit stream, Hither, thither, to and fro, Silent, aimless, dayless, slow ('Aimless? Field-mice?' True, they're slain, But the night-philosophy hoots at pain, Grips, eats quick, and drops the bones In the water beneath the bough, nor moans At the death life feeds on). Robin, pray Come away, ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... history, and never guesses that all history is caused by the facts of geography. He is a botanical expert, and can take you to where the *Sibthorpia europa* grows, and never troubles to wonder what the earth would be without its cloak of plants. He wanders forth of starlit evenings and will name you with unction all the constellations from Andromeda to the Scorpion; but if you ask him why Venus can never be seen at midnight, he will tell you that he has not bothered with the scientific details. He has not learned that names are nothing, and the satisfaction of the ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... of earth between its walls or hedges allows us such intricate and unexpected bird's-eye views of streets and squares, of the bustling or resting city; none gives us such a vault of heaven, pure and sunny, or creeping with clouds, or serenely starlit, as do these hanging gardens ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... he was comfortably settled for the night he breathed a long sigh of relief. What bliss to relax! A throbbing and burning of his muscles seemed to begin with his rest. The cool starlit night, the smell of cedar, the moan of wind, the silence—an were real to his senses. After long weeks of long, arduous travel he was home. The warmth of the welcome still lingered, but it seemed to have been ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... with the threat of a waning moon Why, my heart, do we love her so? One with the ruined sunset There's a regret Time and the Earth As like the Woman as you can Midsummer midnight skies Gulls in an aery morrice Some starlit garden grey with dew Under a stagnant sky Fresh from his fastnesses You played and sang a snatch of song Space and dread and the dark Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Crook When you wake in your crib O, Time and Change The shadow of Dawn When the wind storms by with a shout Trees and the menace of night ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... birds guide their courses high in air on a pitch-dark night,—their busy time for flying? Do they, too, know about the mariner's Southern Cross, and steer by it on starlit nights? ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... Pall Mall Drake was smitten by a sudden impulse. The fog had cleared from the streets; he looked up at the sky. The night was moonless but starlit, and very clear. He lifted the trap, spoke to the cabman, and in a few minutes was ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... tonight, Mrs. Dr. dear," said Susan, coming in out of the clear starlit crispness of the Canadian winter twilight. "I wonder if the boys in ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a marvelous morning. The sun had climbed into a world that held in remembrance only a succession of golden days and starlit nights. The air was fragrant with ripening fruit, and there was a mad little bird on a tree outside the door nearly bursting his throat with joy of living. He had forgotten that summer was over, that winter must ever come; and who ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... his head in the direction of the sound. It is very dark within the tent. Slowly the back rises from the ground, forced up by the head and shoulders of a body that looks all black in the semi-darkness. Beyond is a faint glimpse of the dimly starlit desert. A grim smile plays about Tarzan's lips. At least Rokoff will be cheated. How mad he will be! And death will be more merciful than he could have hoped for at the hands ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... set as stone and freezing hands grasp frozen ropes, and the shadow of death rises from the waves and stands between every man and his fellows. We shall ask, and we shall receive. Out of noon-day shadow, out of the starlit dusk, out of the driving spray of the midtempest, one face will rise, one hand will touch our own, one loving, lingering glance will meet ours from eyes that have no look of love for us in them now. These things our lady ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... close to the water's edge, and saw the still water, starlit, stretching before us, a water hen sprang from the reeds almost at our feet with her shrill warning cry, and flapped out into the middle of the dark mere, leaving a long trail of broken water behind her that gleamed for a moment with dancing star sparks from the sky, as if it might ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... donkey. Incredibly distant the faint sound of a railway whistle intensified the stillness. Septimus's own footsteps on the crisp grass rang loud in his ears. Yet both stillness and darkness felt companionable, in harmony with the starlit dimness of the man's mind. His soul was having its adventure while mystery filled the outer air. He walked on, wrapped in the nebulous fantasies which passed with him for thought, heedless, as he always was, of the flight of ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... are not about to close the day without a glance at the chamber which the two sisters held in common. The night was serene and starlit, and Madeline sate by the open window, leaning her face upon her hand, and gazing on the lone house of her lover, which might be seen afar across the landscape, the trees sleeping around it, and one pale and steady ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with him to the house up the brook, over a field that was as white as snow with daisies. A boat-load of people were singing far across the harbor. The sound drifted over the water like faint, unearthly music wind-blown across a starlit sea. The big light flashed and beaconed. Owen Ford looked around him ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... mysterious light again shining in the old councilor's eyes. But now Nathaniel stood erect, his nostrils sniffing the air, catching once more the sweet scent of lilac. He hurried out into the opening, with the old man close behind him, and peered down into the starlit gloom into which the two girls had disappeared. The lovely face that had appeared to him for an instant at Obadiah's cabin began to haunt him. He was sure now that his sudden appearance had not been the only cause of its terror, and he felt that he ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... the bottom of the boat. With a shout, the other Moors seized the boat hooks and stretchers, and rushed upon Botello; but Juan and Alfonzo were upon the alert, and, drawing their long daggers, rushed to his defence. Never was there a more desperate conflict than on that starlit night, in that frail boat, that floated a feeble, solitary speck of humanity on the bosom of the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... Avoiding the open starlit slope, those three with the dog passed at once into the shadow of the woods, thus taking the safest, though not the shortest way to La Mariniere. Simon stole after them at a safe distance. They came presently to a high corner in a lane, where, over ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... worn, he paced his deck, And peered through darkness. Ah, that night. Of all dark nights! And then a speck— A light! A light! At last a light! It grew, a starlit flag unfurled! It grew to be Time's burst of dawn. He gained a world; he gave that world Its ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... night at the Deans', or Harry and Dan did not stay at Major Buford's. And not a Saturday passed that the three boys did not go coon-hunting with the darkies, or fox-hunting with the Major and the General. Chad never forgot that first starlit night when he was awakened by the near winding of a horn and heard the Major jump from bed. He jumped too, and when the Major reached the barn, a dark little figure was close at ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... impressed her. How great he was; how small was she! And she had presumed to judge him! Abandoning her place in the coach with the precipitancy that had characterized her taking it, she waited till the vehicle had driven off, something in the departing shapes of the outside passengers against the starlit sky giving her a start, as she afterwards remembered. Presently the down coach, "The Morning Herald," entered the city, and she hastily obtained a ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... groups of people. In the second mile the scene changed again, and there was an old turnpike, with here and there a solitary road-side dwelling, with perhaps a man leaning over the front gate smoking his pipe, or a pair of lovers billing and cooing under the starlit sky. ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... at Dirty-Face Bight of the Labrador, whence Davy Junk, years ago, in the days of his youth, had issued to sail the larger seas, the clerk was reminded of much that he might otherwise have forgotten. This was of a starlit time: it was blowing softly from southerly parts, I recall; and the water lay flat under the stars—flat and black in the lee of those great hills—and the night was clear and warm and the lights were ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... not long to wait before I distinctly saw a couple of dimly-seen figures against the surface of the starlit water. I fired directly, and then again, rising afterwards to ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... looks on starlit trees— Sees but the huntress in her eager chase; Wake, wake him not upon the fragrant breeze, Let horn and ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... where crowds of people are moving about, buying vegetables, fruit, meat, and such like. At the further end of the street the din and bustle are less, and I see a large structure standing in an open space, looking black against the starlit sky. I afterwards find that it ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... The night was clear, starlit, and splendid; the tempest had passed away, and the sweet influences of the evening had restored life, peace and security everywhere. A few fleecy clouds were floating in the heavens, and indicated from their appearance a ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... ringing through the glooms Of these green solitudes; and all the clear, Bright joyance of their song enthralls the ear, And floods the heart. Over the sphered tombs Of vanished nations rolls thy music-tide; No light from History's starlit page illumes The memory of these nations; they have died: None care for them but thou; and thou mayst sing O'er me, perhaps, as now thy clear notes ring Over their bones by ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... dewy eve to rove When softly sighs the western breeze, And wandering 'mid the starlit grove To take a ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... waited, grimly watchful; though worry began to wrinkle his face as he noted that the semi-gloom of the starlit night was lifting, and that a gray streak on the ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... enormous cigar-shaped structure of such gigantic dimensions that it seemed doubtful whether there would be space enough in the glade to accommodate it. This appearance, however, was to a certain extent delusive, due no doubt to the semi-obscurity of the starlit night, for when at length it came to earth, lightly as a snowflake, it was seen that there was abundance ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... a holiday in this charming bay; and though the joys of picnicking were not new to us, the roasting of some pigeons gave us a festive sensation and a hearty appetite. The night under the bright, starlit sky, on board the softly rocking launch, wrapped me in a feeling of safety and coziness I had not enjoyed for ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... The starlit night was quickly obscured by the smoke of the general cannonade from both ships and forts; but the heavy batteries of the latter had little effect on the passing fleet. Farragut's flag-ship was for a short while in great danger. At a moment when she slightly grounded ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... neuralgia, and gathering up her shawls and wraps asked me to excuse her for going to bed early. I bade her good-night, and, leaving my host and the two other men to their smoke, I went up on deck. We were anchored off Mull, and against a starlit sky of exceptional clearness the dark mountains of Morven were outlined with a softness as of black velvet. The yacht rested on perfectly calm waters, shining like polished steel,—and the warm stillness of the summer night was deliciously soothing and restful. Our captain and one or two ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... walked home that night, and went and sat upon the wharf and watched the starlit tide come in, he saw it all again, but with thoughts like a procession of phantoms, as if they had no part even in the possible things of life, and were indeed nothing to him. How could they have any meaning to ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... strenuous nature. She did not believe it to be a passing fancy of an ordinary young girl. She recalled word for word what Evelyn had said, and she believed. Maria sat awhile gazing out of the window at the starlit sky in a sort of blank of realization, of adjustment. She could not at first formulate any plan of action. She could only, as it were, state the problem. She gazed up at the northern constellations, at the mysterious polar star, and it seemed to steady her mind and give it power to deal ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... a soft spring night, warm and starlit. The water lapped against the stone walls of the basin and swirled in gentle eddies round the steps with a sound as of low laughter. Somewhere near a chain creaked, swinging slowly to and fro. A huge iron crane ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... in a bourgeois flat on the third floor of a deserted apartment house had been assigned me. It was nine o'clock, and I was getting ready to roll up in my blankets and go to sleep. Beneath the starlit heavens the street below was black as pitch save when a trench light, floating serenely down the sky, illuminated with its green-white glow the curving road and the line of dark, abandoned, half-ruinous villas. There was not a sound to be heard outside of an occasional ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... over a girl's picture, telling himself that Tony must care a little to have gotten up in the silver gray of the morning to see him off so kindly. Happily for the dreamer's peace of mind he had no means of knowing that that very night, in the starlit garden by the sea, Tony Holiday had taken upon herself the mad and sad and ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... where his host pointed, and, in the dim light of the starlit evening, behind the two balls of fire he saw the long body of an enormous centipede winding round the mountains, and the light in its hundred feet glowed like so many distant lanterns ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... must rock at the laterite steps In a reef-protected pool, For we should sail through the starlit night When the winds were calm ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope
... was starlit, though the moon would come later. We hoped to be away from the chateau before it rose. There was a gentle breeze, which we rather welcomed as likely to cover what ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... his own sufferings, his eyes grew dim. The man at his side seemed, in the light of that revelation, stronger, grander, nobler than ever before; not unlike to the giant peaks whose hoary heads then loomed darkly against the starlit sky, calm, silent, majestic, giving no token of the throes of agony which, ages agone, had rent them asunder except in the mystic symbols graven on their furrowed brows. In that light his own complaints seemed puerile. At that moment Darrell ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... which God has revealed Himself to us are creation, redemption and sanctification. Creation is a vast book which speaks to us unceasingly of God, and it is intelligible to all. If we contemplate the magnificence of the starlit sky we must exclaim with David: "The heavens show forth the glory of God, and the firmament declareth the work of his hands" (Ps. xvlii). Yet not only the heavens, but also the earth shows us, at every step, the omnipotence of God, His wisdom and love. Mountain ...
— The Excellence of the Rosary - Conferences for Devotions in Honor of the Blessed Virgin • M. J. Frings
... sky all starlit / the moon shines out so bright, And through the cloudlets peering / pours down her gentle light, E'en so was Kriemhild's beauty / among her ladies fair: The hearts of gallant heroes / were gladder ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... the Sea Lion was some distance from the Shark, and the hatch in the conning tower was open. It was a clear, starlit night, and there would be a ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... shortly after that mid-day meal when I encountered Venza sitting on the starlit deck. I had been in the bow observatory; taken my routine castings of our position and worked them out. I was, I think, of the Planetara's officers the most expert handler of the mathematical mechanical calculators. The locating of our ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... had lived more, lived deeper, than anywhere else in the world. But she should not come back,—there would be no place for that. Grosvenor had given its benediction,—the hills and the woods, the snowy expanses and frozen brooks, the sunsets and starlit firmament,—the blacksmith's simple content and Renault's beacon lights, Margaret's peace,—all had done their work in her. As the lumbering sleigh dragged over the Pass, she gazed back to fix its image in her mind forever. The fresh March wind ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... two afterwards—the last day before the funeral—she went into the yard to fetch in some fagots for the oven; it was a solemn, beautiful, starlit evening, and some sudden sense of desolation in the midst of the vast universe thus revealed touched Lois's heart, and she sat down behind the woodstack, and cried ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... for half an hour under a flawless sky of stars watching the people come and go in the light of the electric lamps, and appreciating the gowns and jewels of the women with the eye of a connoisseur; and then into this starlit quiet there came suddenly a flash of vivid life. A girl in a soft, clinging frock of white satin darted swiftly from the rooms and flung herself nervously upon a bench. She could not, to Ricardo's thinking, be more than twenty years of age. She was certainly ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... him, she closed her eyes, and with soft, regular breathings feigned a sleep that presently became reality. Through the starlit hour between moon-setting and sun-rising Ishmael held her; every now and then she stirred, half woke, and, moving a little to ease his arm, lifted the pallor of her face to his. Before the dawn she awoke completely and began to reproach herself ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... through some clumps of small cedars and thin birches, stumbling now and then over cradle-knolls and pitching into little depressions. It was a clear night and starlit, but the shadows in the half darkness were confusing. A lamp gleamed in the kitchen window, above them, and they could see someone moving past the ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... lay the land of his belief. That he meant to arrive there and to get back again was beyond all doubt his firm intention; and in the simple grandeur of that determination the weaknesses of character that were grouped about it seem unimportant. In this starlit hour among the pine woods his life came to its meridian; everything that was him was at its best and greatest there. Beneath him, on the talking tide of the river, lay the ships and equipment that represented years of steady ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... sooner was the anchor down than the phonograph began its musical invitation to draw near and look and buy. And there was presently candy for the children; and there were undeniable bargains for the mothers. In the evening—under a quiet starlit sky—Skipper Bill "tussled" gloriously with "The Lost Pirate," and Bobby North shook the hornpipe out of his very toes, and Bill Topsail wistfully piped the well-loved old ballads of the coast in a tender treble; and after that ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... of the forest she had seen at last the welcome gleam of water, starlit, beautiful and calm. Stern saw it, too. A demon now, he charged the snarling ring. Back he drove them; he turned, seized the bag, and ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... clover,—to learn to know, as one knows a mother's face, every change that comes over the heavens from the dewy freshness of early dawn to the restful calm of evening, from the overpowering mystery of the starlit sky to the tender human look with which the moon smiles upon the earth,—all this is education of a higher and altogether more real kind than it is possible to receive within the walls of a school; and lacking this, nothing shall ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding |
