"Starlight" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... centuries, and the double row of little stone friars ascending in procession upon the arch of the great gate where Don Clemente stood, lost in contemplation. The cloister and the tower stood out majestic and strong against the darkness. Was it indeed true that they were dying? In the starlight the monastery appeared more alive than in the sunlight, aggrandised by its mystic religious communing with the stars. It was alive, it was big with many different spiritual currents, all confused in ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... normal condition is sympathetically attuned to the vibrations of starlight. Your consciousness is located in your brain, and so long as those vibrations continue to strike with sufficient force upon the optic nerve, you will be conscious of the light. But suppose the machinery of your body were finer—suppose your senses were absolutely in accord with those ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... without a light, and the dim interior of his room accosted him with sad inquiry. There lay his book open, just as he had left it, and the capital letters on the title-page regarded him with fixed reproach in the grey starlight, like the unclosed eyes of a ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... round and tending the smoking heap, the charcoal-burner watched out the long winter nights while the stars drifted over the leafless trees, till the grey dawn came with hoar-frost. He liked his office, but owned that the winter nights were very long. Starlight and frost and slow time are the same now as when the red deer and the wild boar dwelt in the forest. Much of the charcoal was prepared for hop-drying, large quantities being used for that purpose. At one time a considerable amount was rebaked for patent fuel, and the last ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... blazing brightly. Hammer Jones, Frank Holt, Mr. Randolph, and Dill Conroyal, were to keep the first watch, through the darkest hours of the night, before the moon came up. The night was clear and the starlight bright enough to make objects dimly visible a few rods away. The grove where they were encamped was not large and the guards were stationed in its outskirts, where they ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... was anchored between the Cove and Pinchgut, ready for sea. The north-easter, which for three days had blown strongly, had now died away, and the placid waters of the harbour shimmered under the starlight of an almost cloudless sky. As the old mate tramped to and fro on the deserted poop, his keen seaman's eye caught sight of some faint grey clouds rising low down in the westward—signs of a ...
— Foster's Letter Of Marque - A Tale Of Old Sydney - 1901 • Louis Becke
... out of this anger, oddly enough, that the memory of the girl came to him. She was like the falling of this starlight, pure, aloof, and strange and gentle. It seemed to Andrew Lanning that the instant of seeing her outweighed the rest of his life, but he would never see her again. How could he see her, and if he saw her, what would ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... foot, and laid upon the table by a gigantic enemy. The cabin was full of armed men, two of whom were lashing up the bishop in his hammock; two more had seized Tita; and more were clambering up into the stern-gallery beyond, wild figures, with bright blades and armor gleaming in the starlight. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... came drifting up across the divide on the sturdy evening breeze, tinged with cold, that seemed to bring the night with it, so silently and coolly did it settle down. The immense plain and farther mountains remained almost visible in the starlight, in the middle distance the lamps of Silao, and near the center of the half-seen picture those of Irapuato, while far away a faint glow in the sky marked the location of ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... was still there, if that fact could afford him any satisfaction. He could just manage to dimly make it out in the darkness, for very little starlight found entrance through an opening aloft in ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... become so accustomed to associate the startling and spectacular with the Divine, that we fail to discover God, when the heaven is begemmed with stars, and the earth carpeted with flowers: as though the lightning were more to us than starlight, and the destructive than the peaceful and patient constructive forces, which are ever at work building up and repairing the fabric ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... crevices of the flume. Vast stalactites of ice extended continuously along the whole face of the dam, like a frozen waterfall, behind which the water percolated curiously down into the foaming abyss, at the bottom of the fall. Jonas thought that all this, seen by starlight, looked very cold. ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... starlight when they were ready to depart. Austin had arrived unexpectedly, and he, Nina, Eileen, and Selwyn were to drive to Hitherwood House, Lansing and Gerald going in ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... the moon's icy-chill silver Is a sun at midday; The fever he burns with is deeper Than starlight can stay: Like one who falls stricken by arrows, With the colour departed From all but his red wounds, so lies ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... charm of earliest birds, nor rising sun On this delightful land, nor herb, fruit, flower Glistering with dew, nor fragrance after showers, Nor grateful evening mild, nor silent night With this her solemn bird, nor walk by moon Or glittering starlight, without ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... and, below, people were handing about bills of fare, as if they had been programs. All this was sufficiently curious; but the agreeable thing, later, was to sit out on one of the great white decks of the steamer, in the warm breezy darkness, and, in the vague starlight, to make out the line of low, mysterious coast. The young Englishmen tried American cigars—those of Mr. Westgate—and talked together as they usually talked, with many odd silences, lapses of logic, and incongruities of transition; like people who have ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... in cool silence, the girl came slowly to a consciousness that someone was stooping over her. Raising her heavy lids, eyes rested on a man's face, showing dimly in the dusk of the starlight. ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... steps more, the wonder was how far Nipen's charity would go, for the cake was now a great deal smaller, and Oddo next wondered whether anybody could stop eating such a cake when it was once tasted. He was surprised to see, when he came out into the starlight, at the end of the barn, how small a piece was left. He stood listening whether Nipen was coming in a gust of wind, and when he heard no breeze stirring, he looked about for a cloud where Nipen might be. ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... very long. I struck my watch at three in the morning. And the air was so unworthy of that name,—it was such a thick paste, seeming to me more like a mixture of tar and oil and fresh fish and decayed fish and bilge-water than air itself,—that I voted three morning, and crawled up into the clear starlight,—how wonderful it was, and the fresh wet breeze that washed my face so cheerily!—and I bade Battista take his turn below, while I would lie there and mind the helm. If—if he had done what I proposed, I suppose I should not be writing these ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... launched themselves away from their victims and toward the guards, leaving a woman to stagger aimlessly with blood spurting from a severed artery and splashing dark in the starlight on the blue-white snow. The air was filled with the cracking of gunfire and the deep, savage snarling of the prowlers. Half of the prowlers broke through, leaving seven dead guards behind them. The others lay in the snow where they had fallen and the surviving emergency guards turned to hurry ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... the sweet scent in the silence, the kiss of the moonlight and the starlight on the sleeping flowers, the exquisite form of the shadows on the white wall, filled Hamilton with pleasure: each sense seemed subtly ministered to; he felt as if invisible spirits round him were ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... her into the road up to the cowboys, who now stood bareheaded in the starlight. They seemed shy, and Lash was silent while Ladd made embarrassed, unintelligible reply ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... before the fire. It is pleasant because you can banish them by the closing of a book; a puff of smoke from a pipe will hide them altogether, and back come the pleasant, wholesome, familiar things. But in France they are there always. In France the nightmare countries stand all night in the starlight; dawn comes and they still are there. The dead are buried out of sight and others take their places among men; but the lost lands lie unburied gazing up at the winds; and the lost woods stand like skeletons all grotesque in the solitude; the very seasons ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... a night of clear starlight, and below them, stretching away remotely, lay range on range of forest-covered hills. In the distance the heavens were red from the glow of a volcano. At their backs yawned the black mouth of a cave, out of which, from time to time, blew ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... were on a ledge of a rocky, precipitous wall some fifty feet above a wide level landscape. Vegetation! I saw trees—a forest off to the left. A range of naked hills lay behind it. A mile away, in front and to the right, a little town nestled on the shore of shining water. There was starlight on the water! And over it a vast blue-purple ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... could account for my presence dans cette galere. I turned out of a small square in front of the hotel and walked up a narrow, sloping street paved with big, rough stones and guiltless of a footway. It was a splendid starlight night; the stillness of a sleeping ville de province was over everything; I had the whole place to myself. I turned to my right, at the top of the street, where presently a short, vague lane brought me into sight of the cathedral. I approached ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... of divine performance,—for them, indeed, each hurrying year may well be a King of Terrors. To pass out from the flooding light of the morning, to feel all the dewiness drunk up by the thirsty, insatiate sun, to see the shadows slowly and swiftly gathering, and no starlight to break the gloom, and no home beyond the gloom for the unhoused, startled, shivering soul,—ah! this indeed is terrible. The "confusions of a wasted youth" strew thick confusions of a dreary ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... her head and eyed her husband; her eyes glittered in the starlight and there was a gleam of white teeth as she smiled. She ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... his breathless narrative in a way that left no doubt in the mind of his hearers as to his sincerity. He was trembling with nervous excitement still. And even in the starlight the look upon his face spoke of real concern ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... it make, so long as we're happy?" he inquired. And I tried to reprove him with a look, but I don't think it quite carried in the misty starlight. ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... early hills, Ere yet the lark was risen up, Ere yet the dawn with firelight fills The night-dew of the bramble-cup,— I heard the fairies in a ring Sing as they tripped a lilting round Soft as the moon on wavering wing. The starlight shook as if with sound, As if with echoing, and the stars Prankt their bright eyes with trembling gleams; While red with war the gusty Mars Rained upon earth his ruddy beams. He shone alone, low down the West, While I, behind a hawthorn-bush, ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... rounded hillock betrays his hiding place; and he is dragged forth to the gaudy gear of bells and moose-skin lying ready to receive him. Then comes the start. The pine or aspen bluff is left behind, and under the grey starlight we plod along through the snow. Day dawns, sun rises, morning wears into midday, and it is time to halt for dinner; then on again in Indian file, as before. If there is no track in the snow a man goes ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... dearest Prexaspes," spoke the Egyptian, throwing back her veil, and even in the starlight he saw the anxious flash of her eyes, "does the battle join so soon that you ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... of the sunlight, Not of the moonlight, Nor of the starlight! O young Mariner, Down to the haven, Call your companions, Launch your vessel, And crowd your canvas, And ere it vanishes Over the margin, After it, follow it, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... was his usual custom, drank lightly, and often he would find his thoughts wandering among the most incongruous events— starlight nights in a far-off islet, tossings on distant seas, and over and over again they would stray to that glimpse of a maiden in the Jemtland forests. Helgi, in whose blue eyes there danced a light that was never kindled by water, rallied him on ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... the world, and in some small garden a woman sang; and Tharagavverug lifted up his head and starved, and his life went from his invulnerable body, and Leothric lay down beside him and slept. And later in the starlight the villagers came out and carried Leothric, sleeping, to the village, all praising him in whispers as they went. They laid him down upon a couch in a house, and danced outside in silence, without psaltery or cymbal. And the next day, rejoicing, ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... said that Byron's celebrated description of the Coliseum is better than the reality; that "he beheld the scene in his mind's eye, through the witchery of many intervening years, and faintly illumined it with starlight instead of the broad glow of moonshine." Be this as it may, the noble stanzas are all too well known to bear further quotation. The reader may possibly be less acquainted with the fine lines on the subject, which Longfellow has put in the mouth of Michael Angelo, in the fragmentary ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... a frosty night and snow lay smoothly upon the campus. Only the walks and the cemented place about the fountain were cleaned. Tony Foyle had made his last rounds and put out the lights; but although there was no moon the starlight on the snow made the campus silvery in spots. But the leafless trees, and the buildings about the open space, ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... open and vague in the starlight, he saw the plain between the town and the harbour. In the woods above some night-bird made a strange drumming noise. Below beyond the palmaria on the beach, the Indian's dogs continued to bark uproariously. He wondered what had upset them so much, and, peering down from his elevation, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... being tenanted by the three seamen), and Brian was sitting on the ground, stirring up a compound of cocoa-nut milk, eggs and brandy, with which he meant to provide Percival for supper. Percival lay, as usual, on his couch, watching his movements by the starlight. When the draught had ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... space outside one of the city gates. This part of the ceremony is prettier and more singular a little way in the country, where you can trace the illuminated cottages all the way up a steep hill- side; and where you pass festoons of tapers, wasting away in the starlight night, before some lonely ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... the shiny, slimy path of a snail, winked the scattered lights of Marietta. Not two hundred yards away at the end of the bridge squatted the station, marked by a sullen lantern. The oppression was lifted now—the tree-tops below her were rocking the young starlight to a haunted doze. She stretched out her arms with a gesture of freedom. This was what she had wanted, to stand alone where it was high ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... hotel trail led down the bank, and instantly both men drew up their ponies and remained intent and rigid. Brennan's hand rested on the butt of his revolver, but for the moment neither could determine what was moving in the intense blackness of the hillside. Then something spectral advanced into the starlight of the ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... horse to shout and signal to the man that the ford was impassable, but his voice was drowned by the harsh throated noises of the night. Weak as was the starlight, something of the loose reckless swing in the saddle told Rallywood that the rider was Anthony Unziar. Unziar galloped down the stones of the incline and plunged into the torrent. It was clear from where he took the water that he intended to make for the little beach below the block-house. ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... which collies are noted that I resolved never to part with him. Since then we have had great years together. We have been hungry and happy together, and together we have played by the cabin, faced danger in the wilds, slept peacefully among the flowers, followed the trails by starlight, and cuddled down in winter's ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... No moon; and even the brilliant starlight of summer in Hellas is an uncertain guide. Democrates knew he was traversing a long avenue lined by spreading cypresses, with a shimmer of white from some tall, sepulchral monument. Then through the dimness loomed the high ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... window and look out upon the strip of beach, the hauled-up fishing boats and the nets hung out to dry looming vague in the starlight, and I hear the surf's rhythmical moan a few yards beyond; and it beats into my ears the idiot phrase that has ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... now recurring in the nick of opportunity. He crossed the bridge, and, going up to a window, knocked six or seven heavy blows in a particular cadence, and, as he did so, smiled. Presently a wicket was opened in the gate, and a man's head appeared in the dim starlight. ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... came no answer to her ear. The rapid feet beating upon the road, their echo dying in the distance, made the only sound that broke the stillness. There was not even a groan. Yet a few paces from her, lay a battered, bleeding form. There was no starlight now, she could see only the vague outline of the figure, which might be that of either one man or the other. For an instant, the similarity in stature which had deceived his blundering companions, deceived her also; but when she ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... then seizes her by the wrist and drags her roughly to him, looking closely and fiercely at her to satisfy himself as to her identity; for it now begins to darken rapidly into night, the red glow over the vineyard giving way to clear starlight.) ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
... you have planted it? No, no, my dear. It must be left out threescore and twelve hours, and be watered with the dews and the starlight of the South Sea, where you are now, thousands and thousands of miles from your own dear country; but there is one thing I would have you know before ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... no house at all, only the angle of a high wall rising solitary in the night, with the starlight glittering on battlements of broken glass; and in the wall a tall green gate, bristling with spikes, and showing a front for battering-rams in the feeble rays an outlying lamp-post cast across the new-made road. ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... erasures, he will find himself as one of the crowd faced with the following conditions: a perfectly still atmosphere; a brilliantly beautiful starlight night, but no moon, and so with little light that was of any use; a ship that had come quietly to rest without any indication of disaster—no iceberg visible, no hole in the ship's side through which water was pouring ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... sharper as we neared the palisade, which was dimly seen in the starlight, and the flashes of the rifles and the lights we saw going here and there added to the excitement of the scene as Mr ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... and mosses, There among the prairie lilies, On the Muskoday, the meadow, In the moonlight and the starlight, Fair Nokomis bore a daughter. And she called her name Wenonah, As the first-born of her daughters. And the daughter of Nokomis Grew up like the prairie lilies, Grew a tall and slender maiden, With the beauty of the moonlight, With the beauty of ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... expressions—that he was "boss". Imagine a young man and a young woman courting, walking out in the moonlight, and the nightingale singing a song of pain and love, as though the thorn touched her heart—imagine them stopping there in the moonlight and starlight and song, and saying "Now here, let's settle who's boss!" I tell you it is an infamous word, and an infamous feeling—a man who is "boss," who is going to govern his family, and when he speaks let all the rest of them be still—some mighty idea is ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... no sooner over than we were lying lazily in our canoes and, to the music of babbling water and foaming wakes, rushing toward the setting sun. Soon twilight overtook us, and wrapping shadows about us, accompanied us for a while. Next starlight appeared and with myriads of twinkling lanterns showed us our way among the now silhouetted islands. Then the moon uprose and pushed a shiny head through the upper branches of the eastern trees. At ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... always yielded to you," resumed the anxious woman, "and never considered it a condescension. But in this I must have my own way." And Mrs. Chapman got up and walked to a window overlooking the Tappan Zee. The night was bright and starlight, and shadows were flitting and dancing over the smooth waters. The picture of the ship, with Tite waving Mattie an adieu from ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... said Zenas, as he and his sister rode homeward through the solemn moonlight and starlight, "You have burned your boats and broken down the bridge. There ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... boy, whose sweet ways had quite won us all, sank on the snow, and said—Let me sleep. We knew only too well what that meant, and tried hard to rouse him. It was in vain. Let me sleep, he said. And so in the cold starlight he died. We took him up tenderly from the snow, and bore him to the sleigh that awaited us by the roadside, some two miles away. The new moon was shining now, and the smile on the sweet white face told how painlessly the poor boy had died. No ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... strong box besides the key, grew eloquent upon the subject of the rights of man, and hummed the Marseillaise Hymn constantly. In a word, one great sensation pervaded the whole ship, and the soil of America lay close before them; so close at last, that, upon a certain starlight night they took a pilot on board, and within a few hours afterwards lay to until the morning, awaiting the arrival of a steamboat in which the passengers ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... sunshine: in obeying The law that bids thee blossom in the world Thy little flag of courage is unfurled; Inherent pansy-memories are saying That there is sun, That there is dew and colour and warmth repaying The rain, the starlight when the light ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... first she half decided to walk home alone, but feared to do so. She who had resolved on facing the "King of Terrors" shrank, with a woman's instinct, from a lonely walk in the starlight. ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... parting, when we are all to meet again in dear old England. Well then, there, have a cry; it will do you good." He patted her head tenderly as she clung to his warlike breast; and she took him at his word; the tears ran swiftly and glistened in the very starlight. ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... smiled at the generosity of his introduction. He greeted us all cordially and cheerfully, and the light fading rapidly, we rowed on in the early starlight. The gondolas slid side by side, and there was a ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... our infantry using that never-failing weapon, the bayonet, whenever the enemy stood. Night only saved them from worse disaster; for this stout conflict was maintained during an hour and a half ot dim starlight, amidst a cloud of dust from the sandy plain, which yet more obscured every object." This victory, however, was dearly purchased: amongst those who fell was Sir Robert Sale, the hero of Jellalabad, and Sir John M'Caskill. After remaining encamped for two days, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... might have missed that day, he certainly did not permit the thought of them to depress him. With his customary jauntiness, he took his departure; but he did not return straight to his quarters at the cantonments. He turned his steps in the direction of the dak-bungalow, whistling in the starlight ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... think. At present I could only see—see what? At one moment a squalid attic, the starlight shining through patched window-panes upon a lonely mattress, on which a starving girl was lying; at another moment a cellar damp and dark, in one corner of which a youthful figure was crouching; and then (most intolerable of all!) a flaring gin-palace, where, among ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... always in touch with the men, who, bound on errands of war or gain, traverse its immense solitudes. His descriptions have the magistral ampleness of a gesture indicating the sweep of a vast horizon. They embrace the colours of sunset, the peace of starlight, the aspects of calm and storm, the great loneliness of the waters, the stillness of watchful coasts, and the alert readiness which marks men who live face to face with the promise and the menace of ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... take little Denis in her hand. She was not long gone. As soon as she entered the wood she heard the sound of her children's laughter above the noise the monkeys made; and she was guided by it to the well. There, in the midst of the opening which let in the starlight, stood the well, surrounded by the only grass on the Breda estate that was always fresh and green; and there were Isaac and his inseparable companion, Aimee, making the grass greener by splashing each other with more than half the water they drew. Their ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... needs no converse nor companionship, In cold starlight, whence thou can not come, The undelivered tidings in his breast, Will not let him rest. He who looks down upon the immemorable throng, And binds the ages with a song. And through the accents of our time, There throbs the ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... young Indian once, a Hopi boy, who made songs and sang them to his people. One evening we sat on the roof of the chief's house and asked him to sing. He shook his head, and went away in the starlight. The next morning, I found him among the rocks under the mesa, with an empty bottle by his side.—He never sang again! Drunkenness had taken him. He never sang again, or made ...
— The Faith Healer - A Play in Three Acts • William Vaughn Moody
... a blood hoss's fore-arm, teeth perfect, and white as ther starlight; her har war between yaller and tawny, and lots of it. Jest then ther sun shone agin it, and my thot war, 'A smoked topaz ez big ez a dinner bucket war fused and then spun inter threads ter ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... Lay the battle's awful traces, 'Mid the blood-stained clover-blossoms Lay the stark and ghastly faces, With no mourners bending downward O'er a costly funeral pall; And the dying daylight softly, With the starlight watched o'er all. ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... could have crossed the ocean with a few easily spoken farewells; now he could not go away for a few hours without feeling that he must see one who was then a stranger. The meaning of this was all too plain, and as he walked away in the June starlight he admitted it fully. Another life had become essential to his own. And still he clung to his old philosophy, muttering, "If this be true, why will not my life become as needful to her?" His theory, like many ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... I: Stage dark as curtain rises. Moderate starlight and quiet music of cradle-song type. Little fairies come out dancing in the darkness with firefly lamps and sing the following ...
— The Flutter of the Goldleaf; and Other Plays • Olive Tilford Dargan and Frederick Peterson
... out through the starlight, leaving the chauffeur with instructions to secure help from the nearest garage; and as they followed the dim road Merkle continued to apologize until Lorelei silenced him. Both were beginning to suffer from ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... suffocated. Their candles went out and left them to burrow in absolute darkness. After hours of intense labor the appearance of a glowworm told them that they were near the surface. Then a fissure of the earth opened and admitted a welcome draft of fresh air. The miners pushed out into the clear starlight. Within arm's length they beheld the loophole of a German trench and could hear German voices. The thought seems not to have occurred to them to give themselves up, as they could easily have done. Instead, they drew back and began to dig in another ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... could not see the cause for alarm, but presently he discerned the slow moving figure of the sentry as it passed between them and the house. The man was walking leisurely along, and even in the starlight they could see the short rifle slung at his shoulder. They waited until he had disappeared round the corner of the house, and then crossed the remaining space of lawn. T. B. had been carrying a little canvas bag, and now he put ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... he untackled a horse and rode off. Mary and I walked up and down the dark, desolate road, occasionally reminding each other that we were on classic ground, and laughing at the oddity of our lonely, starlight promenade. After a while our driver came back, Tag, Rag, and Bobtail at his heels. I don't think I can do greater justice to Italian costumes than by this respectable form ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... of our wheels Mr. Jessop appeared, hastening from the cherry grove, and we exchanged salutes very gravely, I asking pardon for the delay, he protesting at apology; saying that an encounter by starlight was, after all, irregular, and that his principal desired to wait for dawn if it did ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... night, Mr Venus,' he remarks, when he is showing that friendly mover out across the yard, and both are something the worse for mixing again and again: 'on this starlight night to think that talking-over strangers, and underhanded minds, can go walking home under the sky, as if they was ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... my present reflections. The instructive monomaniac, Mr. Barlow, will be remembered as the tutor of Master Harry Sandford and Master Tommy Merton. He knew everything, and didactically improved all sorts of occasions, from the consumption of a plate of cherries to the contemplation of a starlight night. What youth came to without Mr. Barlow was displayed in the history of Sandford and Merton, by the example of a certain awful Master Mash. This young wretch wore buckles and powder, conducted himself with insupportable levity at the theatre, had no idea of facing a mad bull single-handed ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... this place. In the morning Elsie Meril had promised Jacqueline that at twilight they would read together here the leaves the poor old mother of Leclerc gave Jacqueline last night: when they had read them, they would walk home by starlight together. But now the time had come, and Jacqueline was alone. Elsie had returned to town ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... descried by all; but upon making sail to overtake it, once more it disappeared as if it had never been. And so it served us night after night, till no one heeded it but to wonder at it. Mysteriously jetted into the clear moonlight, or starlight, as the case might be; disappearing again for one whole day, or two days, or three; and somehow seeming at every distinct repetition to be advancing still further and further in our van, this solitary jet seemed ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... of a capital, itself almost in a state of siege, were not the scene for indulging in romance by starlight; and one of the patrols of soldiery, then going its rounds, suddenly ordered the group to disperse. The Frenchman, unluckily, attempted to apologise for his own appearance on the spot; and the attempt perplexed the matter still more. The times were suspicious, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... brass rosettes; he could see the lamp Mary had left for him, burning dimly on the hall table, under a dark portrait of some Denner, long since dead. But he still sat upon what he called his "doorstones;" the August starlight, and the Lombardy poplars stirring in the soft wind, and the cricket chirping in the grass, offered more companionship, he thought, than he would find ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... soft starlight of woman's high ideals continue to gleam on the thorny path of the thinker Israel; may they never depart from Israel, those God-kissed women that draw inspiration at the sacred fount of poesy, and are consecrated by its limpid waters to give praise and thanksgiving to Him that reigns on ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... I had heard nothing from the front, and went to sleep, with heavy forebodings. At two o'clock I was aroused by the sounds of a moving multitude, rose and looked out to see, under the starlight, a black stream pouring down the side street, on the corner of which our quarters were situated, and turning down Princess Ann, toward the river landing. To me, it was the nation going to her doom, passing through the little period of starlight, on into the ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... cloth which covered the remains of Alresca. We were alone—the priest, Alresca, and I—and I felt afraid. In vain I glanced round, in order to reassure myself, at the stained-glass windows, now illumined by September starlight, at the beautiful carving of the choir-stalls, at the ugly rococo screen. I was afraid, and there ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... thinking of the towers, we devote out considerations to the /facade/ alone, which powerfully strikes the eye as an upright, oblong parallelogram. If we approach it at twilight, in the moonshine, on a starlight night, when the parts appear more or less indistinct and at last disappear, we see only a colossal wall, the height of which bears an advantageous proportion to the breadth. If we view it by day, and by the power of the ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... left by the body of his son. The river Oxus flows on under the starlight into the Sea ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... the tree-tops the stars shone with steady clearness, doing their best to replace the light of the little moon which had gone to rest early, like most young things. Under the forest cover the starlight did not penetrate, and the darkness was illumined by the yellow flare of the torches. The fall of feet on crackling twigs, and the slapping of smitten shrub-leaves broke the thick silence that falls on the earth ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... have heard th' unearthly symphonies, Which o'er the starlight peace of Syrian skies Came floating like a dream, that blessed night When angel songs were heard by sinful men, Hymning Messiah's advent! O to have watch'd The night with those poor shepherds, whom, when first The glory of the Lord shed sudden day— Day ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... you O stillest and dearest, To see the pearl of light That flashes in your golden hair; To hear you sing your songs of starlight And tell your stories of the wonderful land Of stars and fleecy sky; To say to you that Seagarde will soon be here, Seagarde the fairy With her ...
— Poems By a Little Girl • Hilda Conkling
... to 'ave come out of the same box, like, an' I didn't like feelin' as 'ow they was all jest charity.... 'Owever, I got this idee about Elbert, an' I didn't sleep a wink thet night, an' couldn't enjoy me starlight. In the mornin' 'e come as usual, with 'is pretty blind smile, an' I ses to 'im: 'Elbert,' I ses, 'You ain't a crool boy, are you? You wouldn't do anythink to 'urt me?' Lookin' at 'im, I couldn't believe it. ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... which the safety of this segment of the camp was held. The tent to which the soldiers approached was, in extent, larger than even the king's pavilion itself—a mansion of canvas, surrounded by a wide wall of massive stones; and from its summit gloomed, in the clear and shining starlight, a small black pennant, on which was wrought a white broad-pointed cross. The soldiers halted at the gate in the wall, resigned their charge, with a whispered watchword, to two gaunt sentries; and then (relieving the sentries who proceeded on with the prisoner) remained, mute ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... he exclaimed; and taking down a couple of rifles, he gave one to his neighbor and retaining the other himself, the two sallied forth to ascertain what was going on. It was a starlight night, and they could see some distance tolerably clearly. No sooner did they come in full view of the field in which the horses were, than they espied two thieves attempting to coax the 'Squire's favorite horse to them. The animal, however, had always been shy of strangers, and would never ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... its surface reflected the faded west. Nocturnal magic conjured the least meadow into an unmeasured sea of vapour; awoke naiads in the waters and dryads in the woods; transformed the solemn organ music of great beetles into songs of a roaming spirit; set unseen shapes stirring in the starlight; whispered of invisible, enchanted things, happy ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... entered the edge of the Miette clearing and saw the glow of lights ahead of them, Aldous caught the sudden upturn of his companion's face, laughing at him in the starlight. ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... Be it starlight, be it moonlight, In these vales below, When the earliest beams of sunlight Streak the mountain's snow, Crisps the hoar-frost, keen and early, To our hurrying feet, And the forest echoes clearly All our ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... not a pure taste offended, nor a peculiar temper unconsidered; and every day has its silent achievements of wisdom, and every night its retrospect of piety and love; and the tranquil thoughts, that in the evening meditation come down with the starlight, seem like the serenade of angels, bringing in melody the peace of God! Wherever this picture is realized, it is not by microscopic solicitude of spirit, but by comprehension of mind, and enlargement of heart; by that breadth and nicety of moral view which discerns ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... under my beloved shears, I was aroused by his footsteps on the deck. It was a starlight night, and I could see the bulk of him dimly as he moved about. I rolled out of my blankets and crept noiselessly after him in my stocking feet. He had armed himself with a draw-knife from the tool-locker, ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London |
