"Twilight" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was his recollection of the whole thing! First in the dim twilight, and then in the bright dawn, he had seen the touch of cruelty round the warped lips. He almost dreaded his valet leaving the room. He knew that when he was alone he would have to examine the portrait. He was afraid of certainty. When the coffee and cigarettes ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... Oozizi; love is a glow. Love makes them dance so lightly along rays of the sunlight. It is made of sunlight and gladness. It is like flowers in twilight. How should ...
— Plays of Near & Far • Lord Dunsany
... came to my mind suddenly the words of a song which I had heard some voyageurs sing on the St. Lawrence, as I sat on the cliff a hundred feet above them and watched them drift down in the twilight: ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Lands alive, the sun has set and we all know Miss Viney oughter be in the house. Shoo, everybody go home to save your manners!" And with hearty laughs and further good-by congratulations the happy little company of farmer folk scattered to their own roof trees across and along Providence Road. The twilight had come, but a very young moon was casting soft shadows from the trees rustling in the night breezes and the stars were lighting up in competition to the rays that shot out from window after window ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and even the gray of twilight was fading out of the sky, when Keith returned again to consciousness, aroused by his horse rolling on the soft turf. He awoke thoroughly refreshed, and eager to get away on his long night's ride. A cold lunch, hastily eaten, ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... began to think whom she could find to live with her. As she sat and span in the twilight, one name after another occurred to her mind, but only to be ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... thing may be said, though not with the same degree of emphasis, upon the Grecian researches of the late Ottfried Mueller. Egyptian history again, even at this moment, is seen stealing upon us through the dusky twilight in its first distinct lineaments. Before Young, Champollion, and the others who have followed on their traces in this field of history, all was outer darkness; and whatsoever we do know or shall ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... shadow of thick and tangled bushes with feelings of awe. I even indulged my wayward fancy by thinking of Gordon Cumming and Livingstone; did my best to mistake gnarled roots for big snakes, and red stones for couching leopards. At last, while in the sombre twilight of a dense mass of underwood, I actually did see a bit of brown hair moving. I threw forward my rifle with a promptitude worthy of Hawkeye himself, but experienced no shock of excitement, for the object was so ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... they must get the sulphur, nitre, and plaster of Paris through the wood before twilight, and for that they broke bulk and carried the sacks. After the necessary shouting of the preliminary directions, never a word was spoken, and as the buzzing of the wasps' nest died away there was scarcely a sound in the world but the noise of footsteps, the heavy breathing of burthened ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... like so many others, 'I have finished my day's work;' but I cannot say, 'I have finished my life.' My day's work will begin again next morning. My tomb is not a blind alley, it is a thoroughfare; it closes with the twilight to ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... joy, but she could go on for it, and with the sense of going on she floated again, was restored to her great spaces. There was no evasion of any truth—so at least Susan Shepherd hoped—in one's sitting there while the twilight deepened and feeling still more finely that the position of this young lady was magnificent. The evening at that height had naturally turned to cold, and the travellers had bespoken a fire with their meal; the great ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... missile. Then night would gradually fall on the scene, sometimes made almost as light as day by a glorious African moon, concerning which I shall always maintain that in no other country is that orb of such brightness, size, and splendour. The half-hour between sundown and moonrise, or twilight and inky blackness, as the case happened to be, according to the season or the weather, was about the pleasantest time in the whole day. As a rule it was a peaceful interval as regards shelling. Herds of mules ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... of evening were deepening into twilight; darker shadows stole imperceptibly over the various-tinted and drowsy landscape, till at last all was enveloped in one ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... the moment, this sudden possession of ample means was strange even to bewilderment. Not to have to cut and contrive any more, not to have to cook her husband's dinners, or to run about from morning till twilight, supplementing the labours of an incompetent maid-of-all-work, was to enter upon a new phase of life almost as surprising as if she, Fanny Palliser, had died and been buried, and been resolved back into the elements, to be born again as a princess of the ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... stead. I can't bear to think of mother and Blossom. Comfort them, father! Tell them I die as a brave boy should, and that, when the war is over, they will not be ashamed of me, as they must be now. God help me: it is very hard to bear! Good-by, father. To-night, in the early twilight, I shall see the cows all coming home from pasture, and precious little Blossom standing on the back stoop, waiting for me,—but I shall never, never come! God ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... down upon that way, immediately sends for his architect and claps a fifth and a sixth story on top of his previous four. And, not till the gentleman has achieved his aspiration, not till he has stolen over the way by twilight and observed how his sixth story soars beyond his neighbor's fifth—not till then does he retire to his ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... but she was eager to tell that when her cousin Sedley Archfield was going back to 'chambers,' down from the Close gate came the imp on his shoulders in the twilight and twisted both legs round his neck, holding tight on in spite of plunges, pinches, and endeavours to scrape him off against the wall, which were frustrated or retaliated by hair pulling, choking, till ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... youth, Unwearied mining in the precious stores Of classic lore—and better, nobler still, In God's own holy writ. And scatter here And there a thread of grey, to mark the grief That prematurely checked the bounding flow Of the warm current in his veins, and shed An early twilight o'er so bright a dawn. No wrinkle sits upon that brow!—and thus It ever was. The angry strife and cares Of avaricious miser did not leave Their base memorial on so fair a page. The eyebrows next draw closer down, and throw ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... our whip!' the driver turned and glanced behind him, but, instead of stopping, lashed his horses to a gallop. Rashid ran even faster than before. The chase, receding rapidly, soon vanished from my sight. Twilight was coming on. Above the low, flat roofs to westward, the crescent moon hung in the green of sunset behind the minarets of the great mosque. I then took up the saddle-bags and delicately picked my way through couchant camels, tethered ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... was dim and gloomy enough, now closing in in the purple- gray twilight. He walked through it without glancing at the pictures until he came to the tall boy in the satin and lace of Charles II period. He paused there only for a short time, but he stood quite near the portrait, and looked hard at the ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... anchor, Rocked on the rising tide, and ready to sail on the morrow; Heard the voices of men through the mist, the rattle of cordage 370 Thrown on the deck, the shouts of the mate, and the sailors' "Ay, ay, Sir!" Clear and distinct, but not loud, in the dripping air of the twilight. Still for a moment he stood, and listened, and stared at the vessel, Then went hurriedly on, as one who, seeing a phantom, Stops, then quickens his pace, and follows the beckoning, shadow. 375 "Yes, it is plain, to me now," he murmured; "the hand of ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... Twilight had set in when we reached home. Mamma sat down to the piano, and we to a table, there to paint and draw in colours and pencil. Though I had only one cake of colour, and it was blue, I determined to draw a picture of the ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... combinations of courts, pylons, and porticoes, what an ever changing play of light, shadow, and form among the groves of pictured columns! What a contrast between the Assyrian sanctuaries lighted only from the door and by the yellow glare of torches, and the mysterious twilight of the Egyptian halls, where the deep shadows were broken here and there by some wandering ray of sunshine shooting downwards from holes contrived in the solid roof, and making some brilliant picture of Ptah or Amen stand out against the surrounding gloom. But the Chaldaeans ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... Now that the hound was gone they shook off the savages with ease. The rain was coming down in a steady pour, and, as the twilight also was at hand, they were invisible to anyone fifty yards away. Hence their speed dropped to a walk, and, in accordance with their plan, they turned to the right. They walked on through dark woods, and came to a smoother country, troubled ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... again—not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are—but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation"—a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... the great doorway through the gopura, a tall figure advanced to meet them which Beatrice at once recognized in spite of the gathering twilight. She had been expecting this new-comer for some time, yet his appearance disturbed her as ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... continued to use the barracks as his home, though he occupied the offices in the White House for public business. It soon became a familiar sight in Washington to see him ride swiftly through the streets on his seal-brown gelding, Twilight, as he went to and from the barracks and the White House. Dru gave and attended dinners to foreign ambassadors and special envoys, but at the usual entertainments given to the public or to the official family he was seldom seen. He and Gloria were in accord, regarding ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... they were seated in Mr. Goldworthy's luxurious parlor, at that most delightful period of the day—twilight—bewitching season, when day softly melts into the embrace of night!—"My Alice, there is much connected with my name and fortunes that must be to you a profound mystery; but, believe me, my name is untainted with dishonor, and my fortunes ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... poems, the chief of which we have named, was a labouring husbandman on the little farm of Mossgiel, a pursuit which affords but few leisure hours for either reading or pondering; but to him the stubble-field was musing-ground, and the walk behind the plough, a twilight saunter on Parnassus. As, with a careful hand and a steady eye, he guided his horses, and saw an evenly furrow turned up by the share, his thoughts were on other themes; he was straying in haunted glens, when spirits have ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... twenty-one years. I vowed that I would expend no more breath in that direction, but the eager face of a child asking for stories is too much for me, and my vow has been often broken. All the time I was in England Nora claimed the twilight hour, and, in France, Lisette was equally pertinacious. When Victor Hugo grew tired telling his grandchildren stories, he would wind up with the story of an old gentleman who, after a few interesting experiences, took up his evening paper and began to read aloud. The children would listen a few ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... late in the afternoon when the scouts arrived at the bungalow, and it was twilight before they had their baggage all unpacked and in their individual tents. Then when the cars were emptied and it was time to drive them back to ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... she sung it The first time I heerd it; and so, As she was my very first sweetheart, It reminds of her, don't you know,— How her face ust to look, in the twilight, As I tuck her to spellin'; and she Kep' a-hummin' that song 'tel I ast her, Pine-blank, ef she ever ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... his face, with his lips to the sacred symbol. The sun went down, and twilight gradually disappeared; night had, for some time, shrouded all in darkness, and Philip yet remained in alternate prayer ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Twilight gloomed about them as they climbed. There was no beaten path, nor any mark of former human visitation; and the way was over an endless heaping of tumbled fragments that rolled or turned beneath the foot. Sometimes a mass dislodged would clatter down with ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... whittling a twig to a fine point—now he leaned forward and drove it out of sight in the cool earth with his heel. Then, closing his jack-knife, he gazed across the tidy clearing at the big camp, and the line of low-roofed cabins showing dimly in the twilight against the trees. But two lights were visible—one in the servant's quarters opposite and one through the window of the men's shanty at the lower end ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... in the closing twilight, took a savage walk round the school precincts, in no mood to admire the natural beauties of the place, or to indulge in any rhapsodies at this near view of the scene of his coming triumphs. In half an hour he returned, and was shown into the ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... and clasped her hands nervously. Mary tried to look cheerful, and moved the saucepan on the fire. A big, dark-bearded man, mounted on a small horse, was seen in the twilight driving a steer towards the cow-yard. A boy ran to let ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... reservoirs scattered over the valley. In certain lights they are not seen at all, but in line with the sun they send up great flash signals themselves, and just after sunset they are always seen reflecting the calm twilight. An hour after sunset our camp-fire is lighted. As we stand by it, the horizon seems to have retired for the night. There is continuous sky, shading without a break into the shadows below. Gazing dreamily down, I am startled by the flashing forth of a hundred brilliant stars from ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... and camels flow Whose staring coats their trouble show, Nor can the leech's art restore Their health and vigour as before. Rapacious birds are fierce and bold: Not single hunters as of old, In banded troops they chase the prey, Or gathering on our temples stay. Through twilight hours with shriek and howl Around the city jackals prowl, And wolves and foul hyaenas wait Athirst for blood at every gate. One sole atonement still may cure These evils, and our weal assure. Restore the Maithil dame, and win An easy pardon for ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... Grunewald. And the summer sun is saffron in the waters of the lake. And about me, at a thousand tables under the Grunewald trees, are a thousand people and more, the people of the Kaiserland, their day's work over, clinking a thousand wohlseins in a great twilight peace and awaiting, in all unconscious opulence, the sunrise of yet such another day. And a great band, swung into the measures by a firm-bellied kapellmeister as gorgeous in his pounds of gold braid as a peafowl, sets ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... upon the former years of happiness spent in each other's society, and the interval that might ensue ere they should be gathered again beneath the spreading maples; and as they conversed, one heart dwelt with greater than usual tenderness upon the little figure that was flitting about in the soft twilight. ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... time the day had so far advanced as to leave but a few minutes between the passing light and an obscurity that promised to be even deeper than common. The sun had already set and the twilight of a low latitude would soon pass into the darkness of deep night. Most of the hopes of the party rested on this favorable circumstance, though it was not without its dangers also, as the very obscurity which ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... took a single captive, and having first shut him up in his dungeon, I then look'd through the twilight of his grated door to take ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... had been barren, And that rejoicing had not come therein; That they had cursed it who curse the days,[196] That the stars of its twilight ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... In front of all of these, shading the entrance to the tent, under this friendly sheltering from the heat of the sun, assembled the owners and the guests of each, in social and unceremonious intercourse. This was strictly the habit of the young people; and here, in evening's twilight, has been plighted many a vow which has been redeemed by happy unions for life's journey, and to be consummated when the cold weather came. In the rear of the tents were temporary kitchens, presided over in most instances ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... Twilight.—Parting day dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues with a new color as it gasps away, the last still loveliest, till 'tis gone, and ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... led down to the water's edge, where he was put aboard his bidarka and a paddle thrust into his hand. A stray wildfowl honked somewhere to seaward, and the surf broke limply and hollowly on the sand. A dim twilight brooded over land and water, and in the north the sun smouldered, vague and troubled, and draped about with blood-red mists. The gulls were flying low. The off-shore wind blew keen and chill, and the black-massed clouds behind it ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... that ring is," said the doctor, ignoring the pertinent or impertinent interruption. "Often as I sit in the twilight, I twirl it around and around, a-thinking of the wagon-loads of food it has masticated, the blood that has flowed over it, the groans that it has cost! Now, old lady, if you ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... not last forever; it was childish to ask that it should. They all had known from the beginning that these days of companionship must slip away and come to an end. And yet the end had come so quickly. Why, it had scarcely been midsummer before the twilight had deepened and the days mellowed ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... At twilight, on enquiring, as usual, if the horses had been tethered and spancelled, I was informed that seven had set off, and that one of the men, Worthington, who went after them, had not returned. The weather had been so oppressive during the whole journey, ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... sweet and strong only, but alive with a divine life, winged with divine wings, essential of immortality, touching beyond tears, passionate as the living, breathing, sighing, dying world, grand as a flood of light, sad as the twilight of gods, full as a great water swinging to the tide of the summer's moon, fine-drawn as star-rays—a ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... King, as she walked to her own door in the twilight, with bitter pain in her heart, could not help thinking of those from the highways and hedges who flocked to the feast set at naught by such as ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the request, and, as we wended our way home through the deepening twilight, related a series of strange facts, which, at the time, took a powerful hold on my imagination, and which I have since endeavored to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... cynical laugh came back an echo hard to his own hearing. Was It speaking the same mute language to her It had spoken to him since first he came to the Holy Cross? The violet shadows of twilight slowly filled with a primrose mist, with a rapt hush as of the day's vespers. The great quiet of the mountain world wrapped them round as in an invisible ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... nothing in the world, short of the most undivided reciprocal attachment, that has such power over the workings of the human heart as the mild sweetness of nature. The most ruffled temper, when emerging from the town, will subside into a calm at the sight of a wide stretch of landscape reposing in the twilight of a fine evening. It is then that the spirit of peace settles upon the heart, unfetters the thoughts and elevates the soul to the Creator. It is then that we behold the Parent of the universe in his works; we see his grandeur in earth, sea, and sky: ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... in speculative disquisition; the Arabian and the Aristotelian subtleties engaged the attention of the earliest cultivators of modern prose (as separated from poetic fiction), and the first instinct of the awakened reason was to grope through the misty twilight after TRUTH. Philosophy precedes even history; men were desirous of solving the enigmas of the world, before they disentangled from tradition the chronicles of ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sitting together after tea, enjoying the summer evening twilight, after a long business consultation between the gentlemen. Harry seemed still engrossed by his own meditations; what was their particular nature at that moment, we cannot say; but he certainly had enough to think of in various ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... against a piece of board, such as is used in binding books, for a desk. This plan was necessary for one so short-sighted as she was; and, besides, it enabled her to use pencil and paper, as she sat near the fire in the twilight hours, or if (as was too often the case) she was wakeful for hours in the night. Her finished manuscripts were copied from these pencil scraps, in clear, legible, delicate traced writing, almost as easy to ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... I found myself rowing slowly down the river, thinking what the issue of my visit to Vyner would be. It happened to be a perfect evening. The sun had just set. The long reach of river stretched away to the distant bend, where, through the gathering twilight, I could just see the white gates of the Eight-Mile Lock. Raising my voice, I sang out in a long-drawn, sonorous monotone the familiar cry of "Lock! lock! lock!" and, bending to the sculls, sent my little skiff flying down stream. The sturdy ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... almost stealthily down the stairs and into the avenue. Half-way to the gate he paused to listen. He was hidden from sight now by the gathering twilight and the rolling mists. From behind the house came the softly muffled roar of the tide sweeping in, and, with sharper insistence, the whirr of machinery from the boathouse. Granet lit a cigarette and walked thoughtfully away. Just as he climbed into the car, a peculiar light through the trees ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and pictureless, and the furniture in it was draped in grey-white. Every room in the abode was in the same state, and, since all the windows were shuttered, every room lay moribund in a ghostly twilight. Only the clocks remained alive, probably thinking themselves immortal. The breakfast things were washed up and stored away. The last two servants had already gone. Behind Audrey, forming a hilly background, were trunks and boxes, ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... sensations in smoking. I doubt if any type of pipe ever existed which was not represented in that rack. When we had selected one, we immediately carried it somewhere else and smoked it; for the place was, on the whole, more gloomy and less inviting than any in the house. But this afternoon, the twilight was very soothing, the rugs and skins on the floor looked brown and soft and drowsy; the big couch was piled with cushions—I found my pipe and curled up there for an unaccustomed smoke in the smoking-room. I had chosen one with a long flexible stem, and lighting it fell to ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... The twilight was fast disappearing before they had proceeded a mile from the camp, but under its dim light they perceived Congo and Swartboy coming towards them. They were ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... old fellow was revived he faintly declined any more refreshment, and with a sad "good-night," faded away in the twilight. ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... face, all seemed to complete the spell of the sunset hour. Elinor did not speak, but with a smile made room for him beside her at the window, and the two looked long at the deepening grandeur of the heavens and the misty shadows of heliotrope and silver darkening softly to the twilight below them. ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... the brain is pounding insistent criticism. For the first time the insidious beauty of Roselawn's tranquillity was cloying the energy of his mind—a mind that never gave him rest, but was always questioning and seeking the truth in every phase of human endeavour. The peacefulness of the twilight hour was lulling his mental faculties, and the perfumes of summer's zenith were stirring his senses like music of ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... grew very quiet afterwards as the twilight began to fall, and I noticed that most of them, after finishing their meal and getting a draught of water freshly drawn up out of the old mine, walked up to their horses and began to make much of them, patting and smoothing, and then examining ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... style, I set off late in the day to avoid the noontide heat, and, after ascending the lofty range of hills which borders the great valley of the Guadalquiver, and having a rough ride among their heights, I descended about twilight into one of those vast, silent, melancholy plains, frequent in Spain, where I beheld no other signs of life than a roaming flock of bustards, and a distant herd of cattle, guarded by a solitary herdsman, who, with a long pike planted in the earth, stood motionless in the midst of the dreary landscape, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... flashes of humor, as when St. Ives found himself locked in the poultry-house 'alone with half a dozen sitting hens. In the twilight of the place all fixed their eyes on me severely, and seemed to upbraid ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... all my thoughts during that day and the following. I was sitting, next evening, at twilight, pensively, in my own apartment, when, to my infinite surprise, my brother was announced. At parting with him the day before, he swore vehemently that he would never see my face again if he could help it. I supposed this resolution had given way to his anxiety to gain ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... we drew near the Alberche, and came in sight of the watch-fires of the enemy. Far as the eye could reach their column extended, but in the dim twilight nothing could be seen with accuracy; yet from the position their artillery occupied, and the unceasing din of baggage wagons and heavy carriages towards the rear, I came to the conclusion that a still farther retreat ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... was, All garlanded with carven imag'ries Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass, And diamonded with panes of quaint device, Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes, As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings; And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries, And twilight saints and dim emblazonings, A shielded scutcheon blush'd with ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... country, prepared to be cut to pieces if they found the enemy they were looking for, or to be caught from ambush at any time by some squad of civic guards. But as one watched them disappear down their long road to France they grew into something more than that. And in the twilight of the quiet countryside these stern shapes that rode on without turning, lances upstanding from tired shoulders, became strange, grotesque, pathetic—again the Germans, legions of the War Lord, come too late into a world which must crush them at last, Knights of the ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... could now see the Dipper well above the horizon—upside down with the two pointers pointing to a North Star below the world's rim; but the Dipper, with all its stars. In our home country spring had now come, the wonderful Northern spring of long, glorious days, of brooding twilight, of cool, delightful nights. Robin and bluebird, meadow-lark and song-sparrow were singing in the mornings at home; the maple buds were red; windflowers and bloodroot were blooming while the last ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... Hetty," he said, "come right back into the room: Raby is so sound asleep it will not wake him; and Sally is asleep too;" and he led her slowly towards the door. The night-lamp was burning low; its pale flame, and the flickering blaze of the big hickory logs on the hearth, made a glimmering twilight, whose fantastic lights and shadows shot out through the door-way into the gloom of the hall. As the first of these lights fell on Hetty's face, Dr. Eben started to see how white it was. Involuntarily he put his arm ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... follow ever with insatiate arms. On summer afternoons, When from the blue horizon to the shore, Casting faint silver pathways like the moon's Across the Ocean's glassy, mottled floor, Far clouds uprear their gleaming battlements Drawn to the crest of some bleak eminence, When autumn twilight fades on the sere hill And autumn winds are still; To watch the East for some emerging sign, Wintry Capella or the Pleiades Or that great huntsman with the golden gear; Ravished in hours like these Before thy universal shrine To feel the invoked presence hovering near, He stands enthusiastic. ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... evil plight, it would be more pleasant to spend the evening with Letty and her friend, than to hold on his way to his own friend's, and spend the evening smoking and lounging about the stable, or hearing his sister play polkas and mazurkas all the still Sunday twilight. ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... she?' cried the person of the house, resuming her occupation, though the twilight was falling fast. 'I believe you she does! But go on with ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... the twilight Here in the abbey close, Pouring from your lilac-bough Note on pebbled note, Why do you sing so, Making your song so bright. Swelling to a throbbing curve ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... which a frugal fire was diffusing its light through the clean twilight room, sat the fisherman's aged wife in a great chair. At the entrance of their noble guest, she rose and gave him a courteous welcome, but sat down again in her seat of honour, not making the slightest offer of it to the stranger. Upon this the fisherman ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... Ceres' army looking from the height On the dim lowlands deepening into night; Soft-featured twilight, peering through the maze, Sees the first starbeam pierce the purple haze; Through all the vales the vespers of the birds Cheer the young shepherds homeward with their herds; And the stout axles of the heavy wain Creak 'neath the fulness of the ripened grain, As the swarth ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... Indian day is but twelve hours fifty-six minutes;—perhaps your first dissatisfaction was evoked by the brevity of the days. There is no twilight whatever; and all activity ceases with sundown: there is no going outside of the city after dark, because of snakes;—club life here ends at the hour it only begins abroad;—there is no visiting of evenings; after the seven o'clock dinner, everyone prepares to retire. And the foreigner, ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... return came near her cottage, she heard lovely singing; she well knew the song. Every evening at twilight the stranger sat down at the piano and sang, and she sang so beautifully and with a voice that came from such depths that it touched Marianne's heart so that she could not tear herself away when ...
— Erick and Sally • Johanna Spyri
... prison to a free-born son of the soil, used to work with the broad bright sky alone above his head, is more agony than a year of it is to a cramped city-worker used only to the twilight of a machine-room or a workshop, only to an air full of smuts and smoke, and the stench of acids, and the dust of filed steel or sifted coal. The sufferings of the two cannot be compared, and one among many of the injustices the law, all over the world, commits, is that ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... the tea, and an hour's quiet sleep, and when the babies were asleep, and grandmother and Poppy were sitting beside her in the twilight, the poor woman ...
— Poppy's Presents • Mrs O. F. Walton
... The late twilight had faded and the June night begun, the wharf was dimly lighted and there was the usual crowd of customs officers, porters, and men and women waiting to see friends. All moved and changed like figures in a kaleidoscope before Jewel's unwinking gaze; but the long minutes ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... higher thy flight the less canst thou see the abysses. There are none in heaven. Look at the friend who speaks to thee; she who holds thee above this earth in which are all abysses. Look, behold, contemplate me yet a moment longer, for never again wilt thou see me, save imperfectly as the pale twilight of this world ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... for her, Of different ages, like twin-sisters grew, [3] Twin-sisters differently beautiful. To some full music rose and sank the sun, And some full music seem'd to move and change With all the varied changes of the dark, And either twilight and the day between; For daily hope fulfill'd, to rise again Revolving toward fulfilment, made it sweet To walk, to sit, to sleep, to wake, ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... louder at momentary intervals as the surf breaks on the bars of sand; to the south, the widening branches of the calm lagoon, alternately purple and pale green, as they reflect the evening clouds or twilight sky; and almost beneath our feet, on the same field which sustains the tower we gaze from, a group of four buildings, two of them little larger than cottages (though built of stone, and one adorned by ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... from the scrutinising gaze of curiosity the grave beneath it. Mr. Green seated himself upon a marble tomb, and began to read Roscoe's Leo X., a copy of which he had under his arm. It was then about twilight, and he had scarcely gone through half a page, when he observed a lady in black, leading a boy, some five years old, up one of the paths; and as the lady's black veil was over her face, he felt somewhat at liberty to eye her more closely. While looking at her, the lady gave ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... time had been steadily tending. Richness and brilliancy of local colour are subordinated, and this time up to the point of effacement, to this luminous monotone, so mysteriously effective in the hands of a master such as Titian. In the solemn twilight which descends from the heavens, just faintly flushed with rose, an amorous shepherd, flower-crowned, pipes to a nude nymph, who, half-won by the appealing strain, turns her head as she lies luxuriously extended on a wild beast's hide, covering the grassy knoll; ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... in the forenoon when they stepped ashore and stood upon the old levee. The splendid life of the Mississippi steamboat is fading, but here the glow lingers, the twilight at the close of a fervid day. No longer are seen the gilded names of famous competitors, "The Lee," "The Natchez," but unheralded boats are numerous, and the deck-hands' chorus comes with a swell over the water, and the wharf ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... education of his fellow Germans for citizenship. It was a time of national crisis. Already in 1805 he had published a Little Book of Freedom, in protest against the censorship of books. Now to his countrymen, oppressed by Napoleon, he addressed at intervals from 1808 to 1810, a Peace Sermon, Twilight Thoughts for Germany and After Twilight. Then, as the fires of Moscow heralded a new day, came Butterflies of the Dawn; and when the War of Liberation was over and the German rulers had proved false to their promises, these "Butterflies" were expanded ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... took up time, and evening was setting in as I reached the great patch of wood where the trees were blazed, and under the shade of these great pines it was twilight at once, and soon after, to my dismay, I found that it was quite dark. Still I knew the direction in which I ought to go, and pressed on as fast as I could, trusting to get through the forest; and then the four ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... Tom didn't come to fetch her. This resolution lasted in great intensity for five dark minutes behind the tub; but then the need of being loved, the strongest need in poor Maggie's nature, began to wrestle with her pride, and soon threw it. She crept from behind her tub into the twilight of the long attic, but just then she heard a ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... Telemachus, each man Exhorting, at the dusk of eve, to seek The gallant ship, and from Noemon, son Renown'd of Phronius, ask'd, herself, a bark, Which soon as ask'd, he promis'd to supply. 500 Now set the sun, and twilight dimm'd the ways, When, drawing down his bark into the Deep, He gave her all her furniture, oars, arms And tackle, such as well-built galleys bear, Then moor'd her in the bottom of the bay. Meantime, his mariners in haste repair'd Down to the shore, for Pallas ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... gathered, too, that Gus's place was under surveillance, and more than once in the middle of the night stealthy figures came in by the garden gate and conferred with Rudolph down-stairs. Then, one evening, in the dusk of the May twilight, she saw three of them come, one rather tall and military of figure, and one of them carried, very carefully, a ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... How long since we have met!" said she. Her tone was evenness itself; she was smiling brightly. If she was pale, he could not see it in the darkening twilight. "How troublesome these elections are! I see you have been staying with the Montgomerys; I do hope he will get in. But Conservatives are nowhere nowadays. Truth lies buried in a well. That's a good old saying." She nodded to him and went up a step or two of the stairs, ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... Lady Massulam flitted through his mind, but he decided that Eve, seriously pouring out tea for him under the lamp in the morning twilight of the pale bedroom, could not be matched by either Lady Massulam or anybody else. No, he could not conceive a Lady Massulam pouring out early tea; the Lady Massulams could only pour out afternoon tea—a job easier to do with ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... wave a shadowy answer, and the rock frowns hollow and grim, And the form and the nod of the demon are caught in the twilight dim; And we look to the sunlight falling afar on the mountain crest,— Is there never a path runs upward to a refuge ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... and hundreds of others, I feel that the sacrifice has not been in vain, so I continue believing that after all the great heart of the American people is on the right side. I think that to-day, the Negro faces the dawn,—not the twilight,—the morning,—not the evening. ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards
... past five o'clock—deep twilight beneath a cloudless sky—the life of that street of streets fluent at its swiftest. All that Paris knew of wealth and beauty, fashion and high estate, moved between the curbs. One needed the temper ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... ——'s wig when the head is in it; duller than a country stage when the actors are off it; a cipher, an O! I acknowledge life at all, only by an occasional convulsional cough, and a permanent phlegmatic pain in the chest. I am weary of the world; life is weary of me. My day is gone into twilight, and I don't think it worth the expense of candles. My wick hath a thief in it, but I can't muster courage to snuff it. I inhale suffocation; I can't distinguish veal from mutton; nothing interests me. 'Tis ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... twilight, Hyldreda did not steal out as usual to talk with her lover beneath the rose-porch. She went and hid herself out of his sight, under the branches of the great elder-tree, which to her had always a strange ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... apart from material, must, of course, always affect the question of the choice and degree of representation of nature. The painter will sometimes feel that he only wants to suggest forms, such as figures or buildings, half veiled in light and atmosphere, colours and forms in twilight, or half lost in luminous depths ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... dies, his good or ill—just such As here it was—goes with him hence, and stays Still by him, his strict judge in the last days. These serious thoughts take up my soul, and I, While yet 'tis daylight, fix my busy eye Upon His sacred rules, life's precious sum Who in the twilight of the world shall come To judge the lofty looks, and show mankind The diff'rence 'twixt the ill and well inclin'd. This second coming of the world's great King Makes my heart tremble, and doth timely bring A saving care into my watchful soul, Lest in that day all vitiated and foul I should ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... morrow they were to commence their journey. The fair of Frankfort, which had now lasted nearly a month, was at its close. A bright sunshiny afternoon was stealing into twilight, when Vivian, escaping from the principal street and the attractions of the Braunfels, or chief shops under the Exchange, directed his steps to some of the more remote and ancient streets. In crossing a little square his attention was excited by a crowd which had assembled round a conjuror, ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... was the woodland bordering the path, and so dark was the shadow of the bushes in the twilight, that he had almost to feel his way down the dark lane. He had not proceeded more than fifty yards when he saw a light gleaming through the underbrush from the opposite side of the gulch that ran parallel with ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... for the latter part of our journey. It will be remembered that so nearly under the equator as we were the days and nights are of equal length all the year round; we therefore did not enjoy the delightful twilight of ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... work; "for this excellent painter," Matteo tells us, "always liked to hear other people give their opinions freely on his pictures." Many a time the young Dominican saw Messer Leonardo ascend the scaffold in the early morning, and remain there from sunrise till the hour of twilight, forgetting to eat and drink, and painting all the while without a moment's pause. Sometimes again he would not paint a single stroke for several days, but just stand before the picture during one or two hours, contemplating his ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... recesses of the Kentucky caves, as did European animals into the caves of Europe. We have some evidence of this gradation of habit; for, as Schioedte remarks, "animals not far remote from ordinary forms, prepare the transition from light to darkness. Next follow those that are constructed for twilight; and, last of all, those destined for total darkness." By the time that an animal had reached, after numberless generations, the deepest recesses, disuse will on this view have more or less perfectly obliterated its eyes, and natural selection will often ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... North Sea, beyond Norway. We fly toward Jamtland, with its high blue mountains, where the waterfalls roar, where the signal fires flame up as signs from coast to coast that they are waiting for the ferry boat—up to the deep, cold, hurrying floods, which do not see the sun set in midsummer, where twilight is dawn!' ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... London for the second time about the middle of March, 1846," he writes in his paper on "A Young Author's Life in London," "after a dismal walk through Normandy and a stormy passage across the Channel. I stood upon London Bridge, in the raw mist and the falling twilight, with a franc and a half in my pocket, and deliberated what I should do. Weak from sea-sickness, hungry, chilled, and without a single acquaintance in the great city, my situation was about as hopeless as it is possible to conceive. Successful authors in their libraries, ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... unconsciously slackened speed, and the members thereof gazed rather sheepishly at each other through the gathering twilight. At length the younger Williamson abruptly turned, dismounted, and walked slowly backward, peering in the bushes, and examining all indications in the road. The other three resumed their rapid gallop, ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... was charged to have nightlie conference with a spirit called Robin Artisson, to whome she sacrificed in the high waie nine red cocks, and nine peacocks' eies. Also, that she swept the streets of Kilkennie betweene compleine and twilight, raking all the filth towards the doores of hir sonne William Outlaw, murmuring and muttering secretlie ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... gardener of the place, that is the sexton, to hold his gardening tools. There were a few ancient carvings in wood lying in it, very brown in the dusky light that came through a small lancet window, opening, not to the outside, but into the tower, itself dusky with an enduring twilight. And there were some broken old headstones, and the kindly spade and pickaxe—but I have really nothing to do with these now, for I am, as it were, in the pulpit, whence one ought to look beyond such ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... first-rate orators and fashionable novelists, could have turned Presidents in and out; if half the best troops of the country were trained with the tomahawk and half the best journalism of the capital written in picture-writing, if later, by general consent, the Chief known as Pine in the Twilight, was the best living poet, or the Chief Thin Red Fox, the ablest living dramatist. If that were realised, the English critic probably would not say anything scornful of red men; or certainly would be sorry he said it. But the extraordinary avowal ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... When twilight fell Slone went down after Nagger and, returning with him, put on bridle and saddle. Then he began to search for suitable sticks of wood. Farther back in the pass he found stunted dead cedars, and from these secured enough for his purpose. He kindled ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... but though we made some progress, the oasis was still in appearance as far off as when first seen. The sun was sinking rapidly— it reached the horizon—it disappeared; the short twilight changed into the obscurity of night; and the beacon by which we had hitherto directed our course was no longer to be seen. The stars, however, shone brightly forth; and I had marked one which appeared just above the clump of trees. By that we now steered, though, I had too soon ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... deck, he hailed a boat alongside—addressed the boatmen in their native language—and consigned Sir Henry to their charge. Twilight was deepening into night as Delme left the vessel. The harbour had lost much of its bustle; lights were already gleaming from the town, and as seen in some of the loftiest houses, looked as if suspended in the air above. Our traveller folded his cloak around him, and ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... Razumihin, he felt so much weaker that he could scarcely reach this place. He longed to sit or lie down somewhere in the street. Bending over the water, he gazed mechanically at the last pink flush of the sunset, at the row of houses growing dark in the gathering twilight, at one distant attic window on the left bank, flashing as though on fire in the last rays of the setting sun, at the darkening water of the canal, and the water seemed to catch his attention. At last red circles flashed before his eyes, the houses seemed ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... I remembered that I had been a great favourite of his; but some considerations would arise which discouraged me from looking for safety in that direction. The steamboat was to depart in a few hours. I could venture to pass through the city once more by twilight; and if once arrived at Quebec, I should be at a great distance from the nunnery, in a large city, and among a larger proportion of Protestant inhabitants. Among them I might find friends, or, at least, some sort of protection; ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... Perhaps it is the twilight which gives a feeling of mystery and beauty unknown in the glare and noise of midday, and I hardly know, as the Tigris seems to lose itself in the evening mists, above which the golden minarets of Kazimain still shine and glitter in the setting ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... a movement to rise. Charles looked round once more. The children had finished their game and disappeared. The brilliancy of the sunset was dropping into dusk and gray. They were alone in the twilight, beneath the faded trees. ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward |
