"Waning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Indian god who typifies the Moon. Partly from its peculiar colour, partly from a superstition which represented it as feeling the influence of the deity whom it adorned, and growing and lessening in lustre with the waxing and waning of the moon, it first gained the name by which it continues to be known in India to this day—the name of THE MOONSTONE. A similar superstition was once prevalent, as I have heard, in ancient Greece and Rome; not applying, ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... American Government resorted to all kinds of means to oust the dictator. An embargo was laid on the export of arms and munitions; all efforts to procure financial help from abroad were balked. The power of Huerta was waning perceptibly and that of the Constitutionalists was increasing when an incident that occurred in April, 1914, at Tampico brought matters to a climax. A number of American sailors who had gone ashore to obtain supplies were arrested and temporarily ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... through this world's waning night May, hand in hand, pursue our way; Shed round us order, love, and light, And shine unto the ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... sit down as before to receive the Captain. The light is by this time waning rapidly, the darkness creeping west into the ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... be applied to private and public buildings in cases where it would be economical and advantageous to maintain for a short time a waning or twilight, so as to obviate the necessity for lighting earlier the gas or other artificial light. It may also be used in powder-mills and stores of powder, and in other cases where combustion or heat would be a constant source of danger, and generally for ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... they were at the heels of the advance battalion, among its stragglers, taking its white dust into their throats and eyes. The dragoman was waning and he made a number of attempts to stay Coleman, but no one could have had influence upon Coleman's steady rush with his eyes always straight to the front as if thus to symbolize his steadiness of ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... by those from whom she had a right to look for tender sympathy and friendly counsel, and feelingly records the kindness and encouragement offered to her by many of the less conspicuous brothers and sisters. It is no doubt that to this treatment by those in authority was due the gradual waning of her interest in Quakerism, although she ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... again, but lay looking at the ceiling until long after the moon had risen,—the waning moon, that comes up so weirdly, late in the night, like a spectre of light appointed to haunt the solemn old earth, and punish it with the remembrance of a brighter, better light gone, and a renewed consciousness of its own once unformed, chaotic existence. I saw rays ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... but it all passed before my dulled senses like the phantasmagoria of a troubled dream; and that tiring, there was a kind of dissolving views managed by artful ebb and flow of light, pictures at whose ending the Rose of May was lost in Francesca, who, waxing and waning in her turn, faded into Astarte, and went out In a shudder of darkness,—and the three were Effie. But ere the views were done, ere those three visions, when Effie ran away to dress her part, I after her and up into our room, vaguely, but as if ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... goddess left behind her some one of her adornments, until at last she arrived stripped and naked before the throne of the goddess of the infernal world. The poem was composed at a time when astronomical conceptions had laid hold of the old mythology, and the poet has interwoven the story of the waning and waxing of the moon ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... can describe the turning of the leaves—the insurrection of the tree-people against the waning year. A little maple began it, flaming blood-red of a sudden where he stood against the dark green of a pine-belt. Next morning there was an answering signal from the swamp where the sumacs grow. Three days ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... From the waning of the Norsemen to the first coming of the Normans is a period of about a hundred and fifty years. We shall best gain an insight into the national and religious life of that time by gleaning from the Annals the vivid and living pictures they never fail to give,—pictures which are ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... daughter not been attacked with small-pox, but having returned home to nurse her, was arrested at her bedside and carried to the Bastille. The Duchess de Chevreuse, always gallant, in spite of waning beauty, constituted herself the mediatrix between the Queen and the Frondeurs; and although her daughter had openly become the mistress of the Coadjutor, it was already contemplated to make her the wife of the Prince de Conti, as a condition of the arrangement by which he should ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... through a greenery of fox grape and woodbine, we reached the road and started off through the woodland. It was a pleasant walk among the fragrant pine trees and in the soft light and the lengthening shadows of the waning summer day. Abruptly the grove ended, and thereafter the road led across a succession of marshy hollows and cleared ridges on its way to the other side of the island. About midway in its course it divided; ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... Jesus was resting in Bethany, surrounded by great throngs who were pouring into the place to see Lazarus, and to renew their allegiance to the Master whom they had so basely forsaken. Time-servers ever, the latest miracles had revived their fading interest and waning faith, and they flocked around the Master as noisy, enthusiastic and as full of fulsome praise as ever. And yesterday they had damned Him, and tomorrow they would cry "Crucify Him!" For such is the nature of the multitude of men. Of the multitudes of Jesus' followers, ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... Ziusudu's recorded sacrifice with that of Ut-napishtim and Xisuthros, it would seem that, according to the Sumerian Version, no birds were sent out to test the abatement of the waters. This conclusion cannot be regarded as quite certain, inasmuch as the greater part of the Fifth Column is waning. We have, moreover, already seen reason to believe that the account on our tablet is epitomized, and that consequently the omission of any episode from our text does not necessarily imply its absence from the original Sumerian Version which it follows. ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... duty waning? The alarmists say it is and point to the increase of divorce, falling off in church attendance, and the unrest among the laboring classes as evidence that there is a decadence. Pleasure is sought, excitement is the goal, and sober, solid duty is ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... married in a little mountain chapel by the light of two candles and a waning moon, while Sarrion and the officer in his dusty uniform stood like sentinels behind them, and the bishop recited the office by heart because he could not see to read. He was a political bishop and no great divine, but he ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... has created the sun. The highest festival of the year among the Northern Heathens and Christians occurs also at the season in which the sun, as it were, is born anew to the earth, and his strength is converted from waning to waxing. With the greatest cordiality is this festival celebrated in the Scandinavian countries. Not alone in the houses of the wealthy blaze up fires of joy, and are heard the joyful cries of children; from the humblest cottages ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... in question, he sat before the fire, his eyes fixed upon the portrait, of which the outline was beginning to grow dim in the waning December light, when the servant girl came in and announced that a lady wished to speak to him. He asked what her name was, and the girl said that she did not know, because she had her veil down and was wrapped up in ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... smallest but most thickly populated of the Ellice Group. The night must be windless and moonless, the latter condition being absolutely indispensable, although, curiously enough, the fish will take the hook on an ordinary starlight night. Time after time have I tried my luck with either a growing or a waning moon, much to the amusement of the natives, and never once did I get a palu, although other nocturnal-feeding fish ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... him still at the window, his eyes on a waning planet, his cheek resting on the little glove laid in his right hand, and singing more sweetly ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... summit soon after midnight, in order to get over the immense snow slopes before the action of the sun has loosened the avalanches and weakened the crevasse bridges. But we did not start until half-past three in the morning. The waning moon, hanging over the Dome du Gouter, gave sufficient light to render a lantern unnecessary, and dawn was near at hand. Threatening bands of clouds attracted anxious glances from Couttet, and it was evident that a change of weather impended. But we ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... by the waning fire-light. A man was obscurely visible, seated on the sofa, with his elbows on his knees and his head resting on his hands. He looked up as the open door let in the light from the library lamps. The mellow glow reached his face and revealed ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... a story of Handel, which I, at least, have never seen in print. When Handel was blind he composed his "Samson," in which there is that most touching of all songs, specially to any one whose powers of sight are waning—"Total Eclipse." Mr. Beard was the great tenor singer of the day, who was to sing this song. Handel sent for him, "Mr. Beard," he said, "I cannot sing it as it should be sung, but I can tell you how ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... waning when once more they came in sight of the sea. The setting sun had turned the expanse of ocean into a vast plain of shimmering, quivering gold. The Meadow-Brook Girls uttered exclamations of delight when they set eyes ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... temporary respite. She fell in her turn, and was devoured, to the last scrap of her hide. Dick again intervened to save Billy, but failed. Sam issued his orders the more peremptorily as he felt his strength waning, and realised the necessity of economising every ounce of it, even to that required in the arguing of expedients. Dick yielded with slight resistance, as he had yielded in the case of the girl. All matters but the one were rapidly becoming unimportant to him. That concentration of his forces ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... a lord treasurer, who sold offices of honor and trust to the highest bidder, and drove the sorrowing patriot from his door. This opal I wear in honor of a priest of your cloth, whom I dispatched with my own hand, after he had publicly deplored in his pulpit the waning power of the Inquisition. I could tell you more stories about my rings, but that I repent the words I have already wasted ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... lean condition in which the poor bears emerge from their six months' wintering, during which they subsist on the fat which they have acquired the previous summer. Even so, in our long winters, multitudes of delicate people subsist on the daily waning strength which they acquired in the season when windows and doors were open, and fresh air was a constant luxury. No wonder we hear of spring fever and spring biliousness, and have thousands of nostrums for clearing the blood in the spring. All these things ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... we find it recorded, is undoubtedly asceticism. The mortification of the flesh is the temporal source of spiritual power. Some incidents occur which put this spirit in a shape bordering on the ludicrous. A saint is at a loss to know how his power is waning. There is some mysterious countervailing influence acting against him, which manifests itself in the continued success of an irreverent king or chief, whom he thought he had taken the proper spiritual ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... image was scarcely self-complacent or serene. It was rather studious, anxious, critical, almost fierce, like that one would expect to find on the face of an ancient alchemist contemplating an alembic of precious compounds. Year in, year out, ever since her gradually waning youth had begun to add ever fresh complications to her once rapid and easy toilet, Mrs. Delarayne had faced herself with this determined and defiant expression on her features, resolved to overcome every difficulty and every undesirable ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... had been lately added to his instrument. Listening to the small sacred concert that thereupon ensued, we had remained until quite late in the evening; and, on our way home through the churchyard, as we loitered along, looking at the graves, and trying to decipher by the slowly waning light the half illegible inscriptions on the headstones, we came across ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... adapted spectacles, by care to secure the right kind of illumination, and in some cases by systematically resting the eyes. Reading on moving trains or looking for a long time at moving pictures may overstrain the eye. One should be especially careful not to read in a waning light or, on the other hand, to read in the glare of the sun. If one works facing a window, it is advisable to wear an eye-shade; otherwise there is a struggle between the tendency of the bright light to close the pupil and the tendency of the work ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... waning, bringing on a balminess of evening such as is found in few places other than Naples. The streets were becoming ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... outlet existing all over the sandy tract along our coast of which Cape Cod forms a part. Not only the formation of these lakes, but also that of our salt marshes and cranberry-fields, I believe to be connected with the waning of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... eat; and tea, water, and even brandy he rejected. Again and again the old philosopher, enfeebled by excessive exertion and illness, would collapse in a heap on the ground, an almost comical picture of despair, while we stood and waited the waning of the day, and peered forward in vain for any sign of an open country. At every brook we encountered, we suggested a halt for the night, while it was still light enough to select a camping-place, but the plucky old man wouldn't hear of it: ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... lowering day, with a threat of unseasonable darkness in the waning afternoon. The judge looked at his watch; Captain Taylor stirred himself and pushed the shutters back from the two windows farthest from the bench, ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... 'to him that overcometh,' and the beauty of the lips that made it: the encouragement to 'patient continuance in well doing,' 'till the day break, and the shadows flee away.' And there, on the other hand, was the substituted light of earth's wisdom and inventions, dominant yet, but waning, and soon to be put out ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... a distant shout of anger and surprise. Chance had favored him in giving him another splendid horse, and now, as he rode like the wind, the waning pursuit sank out of ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the men on guard had borrowed from the regimental library a copy of Charles Reades 'It is Never too Late to Mend,' and I read that masterpiece all the afternoon and as long into the night as the waning light would allow. The guard-room bed, with its sloping board and wooden pillow, made no very luxurious sleeping-place, and I was up at daylight to finish the most absorbing and enchanting story I had ever, until then, encountered. The book retains ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... pitiless lash and clamorous outcry; she would have gone to his assistance, but when she reached his side and held out her arms to him it hurried her past with merciless power, and, bearing her away, left him hopelessly behind. It was broad day when she awoke. The usual night showers of the waning rainy season had left no trace in sky or meadow; the fervid morning sun had already dried the patio; only the restless, harrying ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... Officer 666 slowly dropped as he watched the manipulation of the dumb-bells. There was no passion in the stodgy movements of the great paddy arms. Even so far away as he was Phelan could see that the man puffed and blew and that his vigor was slowly waning. Then suddenly the huge man stooped and held up in plain ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... frightened animal among the refuse of the grounds. Mrs. Preston walked tranquilly by his side, her face still illuminated by the fading glow. The prairie lay in gloomy vastness, lighted but a little way by the waning fire. Along the avenue forms of men and women—mere mites—were running to and fro. The figures were those of gnomes toiling under a gloomy, uncertain firmament, or of animals furtively peeping out of the gloom of dusk in a mountain valley. Helpless shapes doomed to ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... scrub oak and fir. At every turn Baskerville gave an exclamation of delight, looking eagerly about him and asking countless questions. To his eyes all seemed beautiful, but to me a tinge of melancholy lay upon the country-side, which bore so clearly the mark of the waning year. Yellow leaves carpeted the lanes and fluttered down upon us as we passed. The rattle of our wheels died away as we drove through drifts of rotting vegetation—sad gifts, as it seemed to me, for Nature to throw before the carriage of the returning heir ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... courthouse and the spires of many churches. It was an old-fashioned Georgian structure with white columns clear-cut against its weathered brick; at either side of the low steps a great hydrangea, its glory waning with the summer, lifted its showy clusters from an urn; while walk and carriage drive alike sauntered to the street through hedgerows of box. The mouth of the driveway at this moment gleamed white from the kerchiefs of a knot of Polish children estray from the quarry district, who, at ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... look for a moment at the attitude of Spain, falling old in the procession of world-powers, but yet with grip and cunning left. Spain misliked that English New World venture. She wished to keep these seas for her own; only, with waning energies, she could not always enforce what she conceived to be her right. By now there was seen to be much clay indeed in the image. Philip the Second was dead; and Philip the Third, an indolent king, ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... played upon it, and transpierced it with a serious thrill. She looked all about; the whole face of nature looked back, brimful of meaning, finger on lip, leaking its glad secret. She looked up. Heaven was almost emptied of stars. Such as still lingered shone with a changed and waning brightness, and began to faint in their stations. And the colour of the sky itself was the most wonderful; for the rich blue of the night had now melted and softened and brightened; and there had succeeded in its place a hue that has no name, and that is never seen but as the herald ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... people were crowded around the station when the boys got there, as the summer season was fast waning, so that Bert and Freddie had hard work to get a place near the platform ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... a rocking-chair before the waning fire, softly swaying to and fro with the baby on her breast. She looked at Muriel entering, with a ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... found themselves soon nearly up to their necks in the waves, while so narrow was the submerged bank along which they were marching, that a misstep to the right or left was fatal. Luckless individuals repeatedly sank to rise no more. Meantime, as the sickly light, of the waning moon came forth at intervals through the stormy clouds the soldiers could plainly perceive the files of Zealand vessels through which they were to march, and which were anchored as close to the flat as the water would allow. Some had recklessly stranded themselves, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... all, it proved a slow business, this looping of the sunken valley; and when we had worked around to the eastern cliff and to a meeting point with the old hunter and Richard Jennifer, the sun was level in our faces and the day was waning. ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... in the morning, under a waning moon, when we again came within sight of the enemy's vessel. We rowed dead slow in order to avoid noise, and had come within half a cable's length of her, and I was on the point of ordering my men to give way for a dash, when I was surprised to hear ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... the trees, and their foliage cast dark, spectral shadows that swayed fitfully to and fro in the weird light of the waning moon as Richmodis staggered along feebly, absorbed in the melancholy thoughts which her ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... trouble—intuitively connected the circumstance with this event of the settlement. So she drove herself to judge him by the lowest standards—those standards to which a woman at last resorts when she thinks she sees the waning of her influence. That in the heart of them they seldom put first, but last. Yet in the ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it is, in a man, the soonest to come and the soonest to go, while fondness, caring and affection ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... The waning moon gave sufficient light to show the black slimy surface of the ditch. An irregularly shaped hole immediately below the window showed where Vane had alighted. Footprints distinct enough ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... in which so many great victories had been won no longer sufficed. New embellishments medals, cords, trimmings, or what not were eternally being devised. As though such mere external trumpery could create anew the now waning love ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... wit becoming readier, his tact surer, his appreciation of natural comedy finer and (as personal keenness decreased) more equable, his popularity greater, and—in fine—the world more pleasant and the attractions of the study waning and waning in comparison. He was a finished artist, he was born, one might almost say, with a style; but his inclination was to put his art into life rather than into print. Even in our days (thank God for all His mercies!) ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... of the transaction are closed," said Major Jeffrey, ungraciously. There was more than the flush of the waning western sky on his face. He had already dined, and he was one of those wine-bibbers whom drink does not render genial, "I want to hear ...
— The Crucial Moment - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... hesitated a little. Was it maidenliness in the waning woman of five-and-forty? It was, I believe; for how can a woman always remember how old she is? If ever there was a young soul in God's world, it was Letty Napier. And the young man was tall and stately as a Scandinavian ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... as sleep, now in mid-career of waning night, had given rest and gone; soon as a woman, whose task is to sustain life with her distaff and the slender labours of the loom, kindles the ashes of her slumbering fire, her toil encroaching on the night, and sets a long task of fire-lit spinning to her ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... Henry Burns and John Ellison had noted the favourable signs of the weather all afternoon; how the heavy clouds were gathering; how the gusts whipped the dust into little whirlwinds and blew flaws upon the surface of the stream; how the waning daylight went dim earlier than usual; and they had voted it favourable for ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... intervening anniversary I had been compelled by self-interest and fear that he would really pull down the entire Wall Street structure, to rush in and fairly drag him off. But with his growing madness my influence was waning. Each raid it was with greater difficulty that ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... warm protection; and not having despairingly thrown it away in those mountains of our sorrow I do now and shall henceforth cherish it as among sacred recollections. Set up in some quiet retreat of my garden, it may in after years serve to keep alive the waning fires of patriotism, as beneath it will be rehearsed the story of Gettysburg, never to be forgotten while the love of glorious deeds remains among men, with that episode of the Great Battle which the New York Militia enacted, insignificant only when ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... joy in any passing dream Of revocation from their stainless state! Love them: haste on, till thou to others seem As these to thee—their mate, A waning name, ...
— Songs, Sonnets & Miscellaneous Poems • Thomas Runciman
... alliterated, but you will see that he enumerates the natural objects with skill. The eternal summer—the same in his day as in ours—he speaks of as "a coloured mantle," and he mentions "the fragrance of the woods." And seeing the crisp leaves—for the summer was waning—I repeated his phrase, "the summer's coloured ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... La Place supposed, that he could have placed the moon in a much better position for giving light than she now occupies; and that this was the only object of her existence. As this was not done he argued that her waxing and waning light was a proof that she was not located by an Omniscient Creator. He says he would have placed her in the beginning in opposition to the sun, in the plane of the ecliptic, and about four times her present distance from ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... too full of sorrow to let him speak. The waning light prevented him from clearly distinguishing his mother's countenance, but there seemed to be a strange brightness in her eye as she spoke with failing voice, and the hopes her dying words expressed were imparted ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... The waning of his courage did not darken ours; for, like all Englishmen, we instantly commenced a political discussion, which terminated, after an hour's duration, in the British fleet attacking, fatally, the Norwegian gun-boats at Christiansand, nemine contradicente, and the two boors ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... had more than once been aware of a studied coolness in the master's manner, of a rather ostentatious indifference to the quality of the work he brought to the class: and this he knew by hearsay to be Schwarz's attitude towards those of his pupils in whom his interest was waning. If he, Maurice, wished to regain his place in the little Pasha's favour, he must work like a coal-heaver. But the fact was, the strenuous industry to which he now condemned himself, was something of a relaxation after the mental anxiety he had recently undergone; this striking ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... in Grim's eye now that should warn anyone who knew him that the scent was hot; added to the fact that the rest of his expression suggested waning interest, that look ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... sky Had spread a shadowy veil, And one by one the solemn stars Looked forth, serene and pale; As quietly the waning light Through a high casement stole, And fell on one with silver hair, Who ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford
... as nature, like the wind Melancholy or light-hearted without reason, And like the waxing or the waning moon Ever pale and lovely: you are like these Because you are free and live by your own law; While I, desiring life and half alive, Dream, hope, regret and fear and blunder on. Your beauty is your life and my content, And I will liken you to an ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... exhausted with her useless efforts, she felt her neck seized, and that some one was drawing her out of the bowl. The next minute she was laid safe and sound on the floor. It was some little time before she could open her eyes, and when she did so, she was exceedingly astonished to see, by the waning light, the beautiful lady with the golden locks and crown of white roses, ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... long time he sat mute, gazing blankly about him. The sultry July day was waning. His son sought to cheer him a little ere rising to return to the lodging for the present assigned them by the ship-captain. "Nay," replied the old man, "I shall get no fitter rest than here by ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... the chief law of human existence. Oh, how guilty he felt towards Rogojin! And, for a few warm, hasty words spoken in Moscow, Parfen had called him "brother," while he—but no, this was delirium! It would all come right! That gloomy Parfen had implied that his faith was waning; he must suffer dreadfully. He said he liked to look at that picture; it was not that he liked it, but he felt the need of looking at it. Rogojin was not merely a passionate soul; he was a fighter. He was fighting for the restoration of his dying faith. He ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... yestereve, in the waning light, When the wind was still and the gloaming bright, There came a breath from a far countrie, And the ghost of a Little ...
— The Verse-Book Of A Homely Woman • Elizabeth Rebecca Ward, AKA Fay Inchfawn
... storms then shook the ocean of my sleep, Blotting that Moon whose pale and waning lips Then shrank as in the sickness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... not cut off from its past, but holding, unbroken in life and death, the ties which exist for us only in history. It gave a glamour of olden time to the new land; it touched the prosaic democratic present with the waning poetic light of the aristocratic and monarchical tradition. There was here and there a title on the tablets, and there was everywhere the formal language of loyalty and of veneration for things we have tumbled into the dust. It is a beautiful church, of admirable ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... run to meet the Kings so near, with our fougasso and our figs and our hay for the hungry camels. The day would be waning rapidly, the sun dropping down into a great cloud-bank above the mountains, the wind nipping us more shrewdly as it grew still more chill. Our hearts also would be chilling. Even the bravest of us would be doubting a little this adventure upon which ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... little minstrels of the waning year, In gentle concert pipe! Pipe the warm noons; the mellow harvest near; ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... unshaded, Let my beauty ne'er be faded. Never let my cheek grow pale! While the moon is waning nightly, May the maiden bloom more brightly, ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... are good for the blood, because when cooked they are red; that eels cure paralysis because they wriggle; that the moon affects our maladies because one day someone observed that a sick man had an increase of fever during the waning of the moon; these ideas and a thousand others are the errors of ancient charlatans who judged without reasoning, and who, ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... the swathed figure. I shall never forget the face of the woman as I saw it then. The uncertain flicker of the flames and sparks from our beacon (which, though itself invisible, darkened and lightened like sheet lightning), the dismal umbery glimmer of the waning moon, and the pale approach of day over the mountains to the east, made the face appear almost ghastly. But I was quite unprepared for the effect which the sight ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... fixed on the door, remained plunged in grief over her mother's sudden departure. She gazed around her; the room was empty and silent; but she could still hear the waning sounds of hurrying footsteps and rustling skirts, and last the slamming of the outer door. Then nothing stirred, and ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... overcast, the beauty of the morning was waning. They called at the school-house for orders. Yakob ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... an offensive way and garb not only before but when she stood presented." Thirty young men were also presented for silk-wearing, long hair, and other extravagances. The calm flaunting of her silk in the very eyes of the Court by sixteen-year-old Hannah was premonitory of the waning power of the magistrates, for similar prosecutions at a later date were quashed. By 1682 the tables were turned and we find the Court arraigning the selectmen of five towns for not prosecuting offenders against these laws as in ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... slave artisans in the factories are allowed to slacken work. The sun, a ball of glowing fire, is slowly sinking to westward over the slopes of Aegaleos; the rock of the Acropolis is glowing as if in flame; intense purple tints are creeping over all the landscape. The day is waning, and all Athenians who can possibly find leisure are heading towards the suburbs for a walk, a talk, and refreshment of soul and body at the ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... down sidewise, viewing the scene with never-waning interest. These German taverns were the delight of his soul. Everybody was so kindly and orderly and hungry. They ate and drank like persons whose consciences were not overburdened. From the corner of his eye he observed that the vintner was studying him. Now this ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... was not idle. Anxious to determine just how and where Madame Duclos' story fitted into the deeper and broader one of the museum crime, he made use of his fast waning strength to probe its mysteries and master such of its details as bore upon the serious investigation to which he was so unhappily committed. When he had done this,—when he had penetrated, as it were, into the very ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... gather from modern experience the temper of a time when words implied realities, when Catholics really believed that they owed no allegiance to an heretical sovereign, and that the first duty of their lives was to a foreign potentate. This perilous doctrine was waning, indeed, but it was not dead. By many it was actively professed; and among those by whom it was denied there were few except the Protestants whom it did not in ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... which he re-entered parliament. An old friend took the liberty of asking Sir Wilfrid why he wanted this associate back in the cabinet, only to be told that "So-and-So never made any trouble for me." At least twice in the last four years of his regime Sir Wilfrid, conscious of the waning energies of his party, took advice outside of his immediate circle as to what should be done; on both occasions he rejected advice tendered to him because this involved the inclusion in the cabinet of personalities that ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... nigh; the waning Queen walks forth to rule the later night; Crownd with the sparkle of a Star, and throned on ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... turned to the other side, and endeavoured to relieve her busy brain by looking at the window-blind, and noticing the light of the rising moon—now in her last quarter—creep round upon it: it was the light of an old waning moon which had but a ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... when the afternoon was waning away, "if there's nothing else to do, suppose we eat. Bless my appetite, but I'm hungry! and I believe you said, Mr. Fenwick, that you had plenty of ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... his pocket and youth in his heart. The day was waning as he rode up the street and in the sunlight the shadows of himself and his horse were attenuated to farcical lengths. Little dust whirls rose in the road, spun round in inverted cones like huge tops, and scurried out of sight across the prairie. Horses ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... keeper had noticed a herd of deer only the day before feeding at the other side, and it seemed more than probable that we should get a shot when we reached the brow of the hill, or we might perhaps meet some of them coming down the glen to drink. The afternoon was waning then, and we had turned our faces homeward. When we got to the head of the glen the luck seemed still to be favouring us, for there, on our right, was a splendid fellow lording it alone on the very crest of the hill within range. I did ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... vague report which had circulated of a nephew of old Gradelle being transported to Cayenne for murdering six gendarmes at a barricade. She had even seen this nephew on one occasion in the Rue Pirouette. The pretended cousin was undoubtedly the same man. Then she began to bemoan her waning powers. Her memory was quite going, she said; she would soon be unable to remember anything. And she bewailed her perishing memory as bitterly as any learned man might bewail the loss of his notes representing the work of a life-time, ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... like so many robes of angels, you take heart and courage, and with firm reliance on the Providence that fashions all forms of beauty, whether in heaven or in heart, your fears spread out, and vanish with the waning twilight. ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... wife whose malady demands wine; the rags of the husband whose outward occupations demand decency; the neglected children, who are learning not be the children of gentlefolk; and, worse than all, the alms and doles of half-generous friends, the waning pride, the pride that will not wane, the growing doubt whether it be not better to bow the head, and acknowledge to all the world that nothing of the pride of station is left,—that the hand is open to receive and ready to touch the cap, that the fall from the upper to the lower level has been accomplished,—these ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... communities, especially on western Long Island, in Flushing and its neighborhood. But before the year 1730 the fervid and violent and wonderfully brief early enthusiasm of this Society had long been waning, and the Society, winning no accessions and suffering frequent losses in its membership, was lapsing into that "middle age of Quakerism"[139:1] in which it made itself felt in the life of the people through its almost passive, but yet effective, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... his first trial. But each of the two weeks of its duration, in a first-row bench of the privileged, so that her gaze was almost on a dotted line with her son's, sat Sara Turkletaub, her hands crossed over her waistline, her bosom filling and waning and the little jet folderols on her bonnet blinking. Tears had their way with her, prideful, joyful at her son's new estate, sometimes bitterly salt at the life in the naked his ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... all felt a little of the sadness of the waning year. There was a distinct weight on our spirits until Felicity took us into the pantry and stayed us with apple tarts and comforted us with cream. Then we brightened up. It was really a very ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... into one of the main arteries of St. Kentigern, a wide street that, however, began and ended inconsequently, and with half a dozen social phases in as many blocks. Here the snow ceased, the fog thickened suddenly with the waning day, and the consul found himself isolated and cut off on a block which he did not remember, with the clatter of an invisible tramway in his ears. It was a block of small houses with smaller shop-fronts. The one immediately before him seemed to be an optician's, ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... a star that far surpasses that of the moon. The latter glitters only with reflected light; but a star (that is to say a distant sun), when seen through a telescope, frequently scintillates with different colors like a diamond, and quivers like a thing of life. Moreover, the moon, forever waxing, waning, or presenting almost stupidly its great flat face, is continually changing; but the fixed star is always there. It fills the thoughtful soul with awe to look upon the starry heavens through such an instrument ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... if he had hitherto been content with sending his private ships to ravage and terrorize the towns along the coast, this might but be the prelude to more ambitious projects. Naples was still eagerly awaiting some favorable moment to lay hands upon the coveted island, and rumors of waning favor had been wafted from Alexandria, since Cyprus had allowed the tribute due to the Sultan to ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... please," she prayed, with her face upturned to the waning stars, "make me worthy of his love. Make me worthy to be ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... opinions of Mrs. Bryce and Mrs. Charrington would be cited and commented on, and, in spite of her very real sympathy with her sister, Michael shrewdly surmised that the knowledge that the Blake influence was waning would give her a large amount of comfort in ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... "Law of National Expansion," in view of the present war, is interesting. In his History of Rome, which was published in 1857, he says in substance that a young nation which has both vigor and culture is sure to absorb older nations whose vigor is waning and younger nations whose civilization is undeveloped, just as an educated young man is sure to supplant an old man in his dotage and to get the better of a muscular ignoramus. That nations, as well as individuals, should do this is, ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... the bondsman finished trimming the ivory to a proper size, and neatly fitted it into the frame. Then he spread the papers out, and in some haste, for the winter's day was fast waning, he resumed his scribbling, varied by intervals of pen-chewing and knitting of brows. Finally he gave a sigh of relief, and taking a blank sheet he copied in a bold hand-writing what was written on the paper he had last toiled over. ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... whole their continence was great; So that some disappointment there ensued To those who had felt the inconvenient state Of 'single blessedness,' and thought it good (Since it was not their fault, but only fate, To bear these crosses) for each waning prude To make a Roman sort of Sabine wedding, Without the expense and ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... day long; she would make herself as familiar with churches, castles, and cathedrals as she was with her own house; she would wander interminably and delightedly about old towns and cities, or gaze with never-waning joy upon lakes and mountains, and my father, accompanying her, was, in a measure, recuperated and strengthened by her enthusiasm. In the end, as is evidenced by Our Old Home and The Marble Faun, he got a good deal out of Europe. On the other hand, he ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... the story was over. He was looking out thoughtfully into the waning light, and I knew that his mind was busy with those days of the beginning of the institution he so loves, and whose continued success means so much to him. In a ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... of the enemy's forts. Soon large parts of Isle of Wight and Surry had been overrun and the people reduced to their allegiance. During the first week of January several hundred rebels gathered upon the upper James to retrieve their waning cause, but they seem to have melted away without accomplishing anything, and at once all the south ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... limits; and in two reigns further on, under Marcus Antoninus, though a prince of elevated character and warlike in his policy, we find such concessions of territory made to the Marcomanni and others, as indicate too plainly the shrinking energies of a waning empire. In reality, if we consider the polar opposition, in point of interest and situation, between the great officers of the republic and the Augustus or Csar of the empire, we cannot fail to see the immense effect ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... 25th of the intercalary month(12) (702)—a subterfuge, which admitted an appellation labouring under a double incongruity(13) for the mere purpose of avoiding one which expressed the simple fact, and which vividly reminds us of the sagacious resolution of the waning patriciate to concede to the plebeians not the consulship, but only the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... splendidly well. When well, she was always merriest out in the moonlight; but even when near her worst, she seemed better when, in warm summer nights, they carried her cradle out into the light of the waning moon. Then in her sleep she would smile ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... the gleemen sing of, with the light of the red fire waxing and waning across the courtyard the while. The strange lights and shadows it cast were to the advantage of our men for a little while, but the numbers were too great against them for that to be of much avail. Soon they who had not fallen were borne back to the hall door, and there stood again, but ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... within business reach, there came a letter from him saying that he was settled at Gormanville, and wishing that he might tempt us up some afternoon before we were off to the mountains or seaside. This revived all my wife's waning interest in him, and it was hard to keep the answer I made him from expressing in a series of crucial inquiries the excitement she felt at his being in New England and so near Boston, and in Gormanville of all places. It was one of the places we had thought ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... was waning before Johnston prepared to start on the return journey, and Mr. Stewart tried hard to persuade him to stay for the night—an invitation that Frank devoutly hoped would be accepted. But the big foreman would not hear ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... by night in studded mailcoats; their shields shone by the waning moon. They dismounted from the saddle at the hall-gable, and went in along the hall. They saw rings strung on bast which the hero owned, seven hundred in all; they took them off and put, them on again, all but one. The keen-eyed archer Voelund came ...
— The Edda, Vol. 2 - The Heroic Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 13 • Winifred Faraday
... door and stepped out into the night. In the shed beside the garden-gate the gardener had left his wheelbarrow. I fetched it out, set Lydia on the top of it, and wheeled her off towards Woeful Ness. There was just the rim of a waning moon to light me, but I knew every ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... dismay. No exertions of theirs could rally the dispersed, or skill prevent the fatal consequences. At the present day the seminary of Olinda, in comparison with the former Jesuits' college, is only as the waning moon's beam to the ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... the Place de la Concorde, and Vedrine pointed with one of his slow calm movements to a great piece of sky overhead where the dark green colour was pierced here and there by newly-appearing stars, visible in the waning light ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... usual, he turned in the other direction and went down to the Jones Lane pier, now for the most part deserted and quiet in the waning light. Here and there a watchman sat on a bale smoking his pipe, while occasionally a sailor lay a more or less unsteady ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... condition in the next world depended on the discharge of all claims against him. And the duty of paying ancestral debts was evaded only in the case of helpless or hopeless poverty. Of late, partly owing to the waning power of caste and religious feeling in the matter, and partly to the knowledge of the bankruptcy laws, the standard of commercial honour has greatly fallen. Since the case of bankruptcy is governed and arranged for by law, the trader thinks that so long ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... collection of cloud about Cape Crozier and Mount Terror, and a black line of stratus low on the western slopes of Erebus. With us the sun was shining and it was particularly warm and pleasant. Shortly after we started mist formed about us, waxing and waning in density; a slight southerly breeze sprang up, cumulo-stratus cloud formed overhead with a rather windy appearance ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... housekeeper and an inspection on the part of the nurse, brought forth permission for Tom to see the patient. Though he had never known Mr. Keith he could see that the man's health was indeed fast waning. ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... Life, the Sun-God was of course considered to be bi-sexual. But when the two great lights of heaven, the Sun and the Moon, were associated with each other, as was often and naturally the ease, the Sun was considered to be more especially a personification of the Male Principle, and the waxing and waning moon, as represented by the Crescent, a personification of the Female Principle. Hence the worship of the God associated with the radiate sun, as of that of the Goddess associated with the crescent moon and called the Sun-God's mother or bride, was ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons
... anyway, as you say," said Saterlee. "But—" and he fished in his pocket and brought out his son's letter and gave it to her. She read it in the waning light. ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... In sapience I excell'd not, gladder far Of others' hurt, than of the good befell me. That thou mayst own I now deceive thee not, Hear, if my folly were not as I speak it. When now my years slop'd waning down the arch, It so bechanc'd, my fellow citizens Near Colle met their enemies in the field, And I pray'd God to grant what He had will'd. There were they vanquish'd, and betook themselves Unto the bitter passages of flight. I mark'd the hunt, and waxing out of bounds In gladness, lifted up ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... travel a man is thrown back upon himself: at any rate, I am, and with waning courage and a growing regret I sank into a corner of my seat by the window, and glowered at the interminable slices of landscape that slid past me on both sides of the rocking train. Have you ever noted the refrain of the flying ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... Overhead, branches writhing, winding, interlacing, unwinding, scattering; tortured twinings, tossings, creakings. Wind flinging branches apart, drawing them together, whispering and whining among them. A waning, lopsided moon cutting through black clouds. A stream of pebbles and earth and the empty spade gleams clear in the moonlight, then is rammed again into the black earth. Tramping of feet. Men ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... frequently filled by unimportant young emotions. Because she was a logical creature, and had watched life and those living it with clear and interested eyes, she had not been blind to the path which had marked itself before her during the summer's growth and waning. She had not, at first, perhaps, known exactly when things began to change for her—when the clarity of her mind began to be disturbed. She had thought in the beginning—as people have a habit of doing—that an instance—a problem—a situation had attracted her attention because ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... collaborating. But failing Maxwell's consent to anything of the sort, Godolphin did the swinging over the roads himself, so far as the roads lay between Manchester and Magnolia. He began by coming in the forenoon, when he broke Maxwell up fearfully, but he was retarded by a waning of his own ideal in the matter, and finally got to arriving at that hour in the afternoon when Maxwell could be found revising his morning's work, or lying at his wife's feet on the rocks, and now and then irrelevantly bringing up a knotty point in the ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... That night it was reported that the rebels in great numbers were evacuating the city by the south side, the Bareilly and Neemuch brigades making off in the direction of Gwalior. Certain it is that from this period signs of waning strength appeared among the enemy, and fewer attempts at assault were made on our outposts, those on the left near the Palace, which were well protected by breastworks, being only exposed to a very ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... died, as she had foretold, in the Charity Hospital. The widow was free. If she could bring down her bird, it was now in her power to make it hers for life. Henceforth all her efforts were directed to that end. She was reaching her fortieth year, her hair was turning grey, her charms were waning. Poverty, degradation, a miserable old age, a return to the wretched surroundings of her childhood, such she knew to be the fate of many of her kind. There was nothing to be hoped for from the generosity of men. Her lovers were leaving her. Blackmail, speculation on the Bourse, even ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... aye more and more is my coveting and my admonition. I consider thee never of the less merit if thou beest not in so great abstinence; but if thou set all thy thought how thou mayest love thy Spouse JESUS Christ more than thou hast done, then dare I say that thy reward is waxing not waning. ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... the majesty of her presence. Now things were far otherwise, and even had she not scorned to use them, such arts would have availed us nothing in this extremity. Now her great name was but a shadow, one of many waning shadows cast by an empire whose glory had gone for ever; now she used no passionate appeal to the pride and traditions of a doomed race, now she was no longer young and the first splendour of her womanhood had departed from her. And yet, as with her son and mine at her side, she rose ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... sin is undeniable. Yet it seems to me that the worst errors of Calvinism and Evangelicalism in this regard have lain in a tendency to theological formalism and a failure to keep in touch with real life. In consequence, those who most deplore our waning sense of sin try us by a perverted or antiquated standard, and fasten often on changes of sentiment and habit which are by no means necessarily or largely sinful. They are least conscious of the want ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... was waning, and that its forces had received little encouragement during the recess of the Congress that had just closed, was evidenced by the fact that there could not be mustered ayes enough to put the resolution to a vote, and Mr. Wilson, of Iowa, moved the ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... vigorous of the flock were most affected. The little family was scattered. Redruff himself flew on several long erratic night journeys. The impulse took him southward, out there lay the boundless stretch of Lake Ontario, so he turned again, and the waning of the Mad Moon found him once more in the Mud Creek Glen, but ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... swell, we lay awhile. There was no sign of the weather clearing, no lift in the grey mist that hung dense over the rugged coast-line. On deck again, the Old Man stared long and earnestly at the rocky islets, seeking a further guidemark. In the waning daylight they were fast losing shape and colour. Only the breaking sea, white and sightly, marked them bold in the grey mist-laden breath of the Atlantic. "——'present themselves, consisting of four high rocky islets of from two thirty-three to three ought-six feet in height, an' steep-to,'" ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... off, and then we'll talk, boys. I'm putting salt on old Burgess's tail." The rough jest was received with a roar, and Jones, looking momentarily down from his window on the staging, saw, in the waning light, a group of men freeing themselves from their irons with a hammer taken from the guard-house; while two, already freed, were casting buckets of water on the beacon wood-pile. The sentry was lying bound at a ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... a moon, and when the moon was waning, I wearied and wandered away through the streets of the city and came to the garden of its god. The priests in their yellow robes moved silently through the green trees, and on a pavement of black marble stood the rose-red house ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... now, that I actually peeped over her shoulder. With mingled surprise and dismay I found that the dim page over which she bent was that of an old account-book. Ancient household records, in rusty ink, held up to the glimpses of the waning moon, which shone through the parting in the curtains, their entries of shillings and pence!—Of pounds there was not one. No doubt pounds and farthings are much the same in the world of thought—the true spirit-world; but in the ghost-world ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... been useful, was subject to the common law of favourites, and began to totter when she appeared no longer so. One resource remained to her—to remarry Philip V. She was anxious to find a consort who could replace in her interests Marie Louise, and restore her waning influence. Her incertitude was great: she felt truly that in spite of past services her future fate depended upon her choice. At length she cast her eyes upon Elizabeth Farnese, daughter of the last Duke of Parma, ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... sat down opposite Marthe and examined her long and carefully. She noted the eye-lids, which were a little rumpled; the uneven colouring; the tiny wrinkles on the temples; a few white hairs mingling with the dark tresses; all that proclaims time's little victories over waning youth. And, raising her eyes, she saw herself ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... not this rushing at once in medias res? It is; there's no paltry subterfuge about it—no unnecessary wearing out of "the waning moon they met by"—"the stars that gazed upon their joy"—"the whispering gales that breathed in zephyr's softest sighs"—their "lover's perjuries to the distracted trees they wouldn't allow to go to sleep." In short, "there's no nonsense"—there's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 12, 1841 • Various |
