"Unearthly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a crash and an unearthly scream, then a thud that sounded as if it had happened in the middle of the earth. Father Donovan and I looked around in alarm, but Paddy was nowhere to be seen. Toward the wall there was a square black hole, and, rushing up to it, we knew at once ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... two men lived in the kitchen as before; when they were at home she ate and sat in the parlour alone. Jim watched her as far as his dull brain was capable of watching, and he dimly understood that she was dying. Both men, indeed, felt a sort of superstitious awe of her, she was so changed, so unearthly. As for the story of the ghost, the old popular superstitions are almost dead in the Cumbrian mountains, and the shrewd north-country peasant is in many places quite as scornfully ready to sacrifice his ghosts ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... beautify rooms or furniture or costumes, or to put upon cornices or monuments or on the prows or sterns of ships, or to put anywhere before the human eye indoors or out, that which distorts honest shapes or which creates unearthly beings or places or contingencies, is a nuisance and revolt. Of the human form especially, it is so great it must never be made ridiculous. Of ornaments to a work nothing outre can be allowed ... but ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... minute bricks, seeming to form one solid mass; the floor of tiling, arranged in patterns, which could still be obscurely traced by the light of the lamp left by the charity of Sidroc to the prisoner; for the dungeon was of bad reputation; lights had been seen there at unearthly hours, when the outer door was ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... convinced that had I not been startled from the torpidity of horror in which I was bound by some powerful and arousing stimulant, I should have gazed upon this unearthly apparition until I had fairly lost my senses. As it was, however, the spell was broken—superstition gave way to reason: the man whom all believed to have been actually dead ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... they had expected, voices were heard in the distance and the most unearthly noises broke the woodland stillness. There was a banging of wood upon tin and the clatter of utensils mingling with the outrageous uproar from three pairs of sound and healthy lungs. There were shouts and war cries and yells, combining ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... significance of the universe; I should not be surprised to find that art was an expression of the same thing. Anyway, both seem to express emotions different from and transcending the emotions of life. Certainly both have the power of transporting men to superhuman ecstasies; both are means to unearthly states of mind. Art and religion belong to the same world. Both are bodies in which men try to capture and keep alive their shyest and most ethereal conceptions. The kingdom of neither is of this world. Rightly, therefore, do we regard art ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... window. Julia went to the door and, opening it, looked out. There was a little mist about and the moon, quite a young one, was struggling through it, shining with a soft, diffused light that made the landscape very unearthly. ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... hollow, and sunk, and wan, And his lips were thin and blue; The unearthly look of that dying man, As his tale of horror he thus began, Sent a ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... their heads and wrap it around as tightly as she could with a string, and then, catching hold of this "topknot," she would pull with all her might to bring up the palate. The unlucky little "nig" in the meanwhile kept up the most unearthly yells, for so great was the depravity among them that they had rather have their palates down than up. Keeping their "palate locks" tied was a source of great trouble and worriment ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... fashion and material, as when last seen; still, it had been changed; for on the breast of the silken frock was painted an image of the sea-green lady, done with exquisite skill, and in a manner to preserve the whole of the wild and unearthly character of the expression. The wearer of this singular ornament leaned lightly against the little table, and as he bowed with entire self-possession to his guests, his face was lighted with a smile, that seemed to betray ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... will have forfeited any fervour he may have had, any learning, any gaiety. How can he, the jaded interpreter, hold any opinion, feel any enthusiasm?—without leisure, keep his mind in cultivation?—be sprightly to order, at unearthly hours in a whir-r-ring office? To order! Yes, sprightliness is compulsory there; so are weightiness, and fervour, and erudition. He must seem to abound in these advantages, or another man will take his place. He must disguise himself ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... and ghastly pale, he tottered forward with tremulous steps. His eyes had an unearthly luster, his cheeks a burning flush, and his neglected hair and long beard were matted ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... for her, to her own unspeakable comfort and our great relief. Friends and strangers, touched with her protracted sickness, poured blessings around her couch; fruits, in their season, and when out of their season, of what almost unearthly beauty! and flowers which, with the fruits, made that sick room seem like the garden which the Lord planted in Eden. Such have been the alleviations of pain and suffering, the comforts, and even the pleasures, and above ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... "Go not without my thanks, though I must reject thy counsel. To-morrow I am admitted into the Brotherhood of Righteousness." In the fading light his face shone weird and unearthly amid the raven hair. "But why didst thou risk thy good name to tell ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... her hair, standing straight up in the yellow radiance like a moor-sprite. There was something almost unearthly in her lithe young body and fearless sea-blue eyes, sparkling from ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... on my spirits, and to fill me with distrust. I found myself suspecting that there was some change—perhaps an unearthly change—passing over the room. To remain blindfolded any longer was more than I could endure. I lifted my hand—without being conscious of the heavy sensation which, some time before, had laid my limbs helpless ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... forecastle that something wild, unearthly, hellish, was aloft, and the watch below turned out, too restless to sleep, and all through those hours of darkness the sailors walked the decks in groups, again and again staring up at the foretopmast ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... martial splendor poured the Persian's train? Then did those mighty and mysterious Powers, Armed with the elements, to vengeance wake, Call the dread storms to darken round their towers, Hurl down the rocks, and bid the thunders break; Till far around, with deep and fearful clang, Sounds of unearthly war ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... said Trottle thinks it best not to report, seeing that the old hypocrite, getting next door to light-headed at the golden prospect before her, took such liberties with unearthly names and persons which ought never to have approached her lips, and rained down such an awful shower of blessings on Trottle's head, that his hair almost stood on end to hear her. He went on down-stairs as fast as his feet would carry him, till he was brought up all standing, ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... that plateau the air reverberates greatly; and there's nothing on earth which so much gives a sense of power—power that crushes—as the stamps of a great mine pounding away night and day. There they go, thundering on, till it seems to you that some unearthly power is hammering the world into shape. You get up and go to the window and look out into the night. There's the deep blue sky—blue like nothing you ever saw in any other sky, and the stars so ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of the North are accustomed to the enormous; we have unearthly sunsets and the clouds magnify our hills. The Southern men see nothing but misproportion in what is enormous. They love to have things in order, and violence in art is odious to them. This high and dreadful roof had not been raised under the influences of the island; it had surely been designed ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... wife's curtain lecture are too precious to the enraptured husband to be shared with other ears. And in the hush of the bed-time hour, when tired daddies are seeking repose in the oblivion of sleep, the unearthly bangs on the grand piano below in the parlor, and the unearthly screams and yells of the budding prima donna, as she sings to ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... were large and dark and mysterious. Her face bore unmistakable traces of sorrow. Deep lines were graven on her pale forehead, and on her wan, thin cheeks. Her hair was white as snow, and her complexion was of an unearthly grayish hue. It was a memorable face—a face which, once seen, might haunt one long afterward. In the eyes there was tenderness and softness, yet the fashion of the mouth and chin seemed to speak of resolution and force, in spite of the ravages which age or sorrow had made. She stood quite unconscious ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... lamp which was burning itself out, I was roused from my torpor by a light rap at the outside door. In the office all was quiet, but for the heavy and rhythmic snores of the weary comrades, and wondering who could claim admittance at such an unearthly hour, I rose with a shiver and opened the door. To my surprise I found myself face to face ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... a song—I heard it sung; In the ear of my soul its strange notes rung. What were its words I could not tell, Only the voice I heard right well, For its tones unearthly my spirit bound In a calm delirium of mystic sound— Held me floating, alone and high, Placeless and silent, drinking my fill Of dews that from cloudless skies distil On desert places that thirst and sigh. 'Twas a woman's voice, deep calling ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... ravines, allowing him no respite, by day or by night. Eating, drinking, sleeping in his saddle, the veteran, eighty years of age, saw his own followers tire one after another, while he urged on the chase, like the wild huntsman of Burger, as if endowed with an unearthly frame, incapable of fatigue! During this terrible pursuit, which continued for more than two hundred leagues over a savage country, Centeno found himself abandoned by most of his followers. Such of them as fell into Carbajal's hands were sent to speedy execution; for that ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... spectator. Not a word was spoken; the solemn silence, the immobility and deathlike pallor of the objects, was awful—they were as breathing corpses. The clay-cold nuns evoked from their tombs, presented not a more unearthly spectacle to Robert of Normandy. The free-and-easy expressions of Dr B., however, which first broke the silence, instantly dissolved the spell. "That woman," he said, pointing to her on the floor, "has a disease of the liver, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... would be clenched and held together as with a vice; their limbs stiff and rigid or wholly relaxed; their teeth would be set; they would go through the paroxysms of choking and strangulation, and gasp for breath, bringing froth and blood from the mouth; they would utter all sorts of screams in unearthly tones; their eyes remain fixed, sometimes bereft of all light and expression, cold and stony, and sometimes kindled into flames of passion; they would pass into the state of somnambulism, without aim or conscious direction in their movements, looking at some point, where ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... in a weird, unearthly sort of way. As I had already noticed, her eyes were of unusual size, and I saw now that they were an intense shade of blue, with a pupil of extraordinary proportion. Her nose was well shaped, but the nostrils were slightly flattened, and the orifices were rather more ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... of the night-breeze among the laurustines, and yet in the ears of Cagliostro there was the utterance as of unsubstantial lips—the sense as of a divine symphony—"the thunder, and the music, and the pomp" of an unearthly Voice.[9] ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... to do it, of course, and, although I think most of our sights were a little high, accidents will happen. Feodor emitted one unearthly shriek, and his time back towards home would, if it had been taken, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... Kermit and Archie, with Philip, Oliver and Nicholas out for a night's camping in the two rowboats last week. They enjoyed themselves heartily, as usual, each sleeping rolled up in his blanket, and all getting up at an unearthly hour. Also, as usual, they displayed a touching and firm conviction that my cooking is unequalled. It was of a simple character, consisting of frying beefsteak first and then potatoes in bacon fat, over the camp fire; but they certainly ate in a way that showed ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... and Win leading the way. St. Helier's streets are indeed crooked, and paved with cobble stones of alarming size and sonorous qualities. Numerous men and boys tramped along in wooden sabots which made a most unearthly clatter. Even little girls wore them, though otherwise their dress was not unusual. Outside one shop hung many of the clumsy foot- gear, the ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... rose, and appeared determined to fix Olavida's regards by a gaze like that of fascination. Olavida rocked, reeled, grasped the arm of a page, and at last, closing his eyes for a moment, as if to escape the horrible fascination of that unearthly glare (the Englishman's eyes were observed by all the guests, from the moment of his entrance, to effuse a most fearful and preternatural luster), exclaimed, "Who is among us?—Who?—I cannot utter a blessing while he is here. I cannot feel one. Where he treads, the earth is parched!—Where ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... On earth or under Heaven, but hath in it Essence whereby alone its form may hit Our apprehension, channelled in the sense Which feedeth us, that we through vision dense See Gods as trees walking, or in the wind That singeth in the bents guess what's behind Its wailing music. And now the unearthly flock, Emptying every water, wood, bare rock And pasture, beset Ida, and their wings Beat o'er the forest which about her springs And makes a sea of verdure, whence she lifts Her soaring peaks to bathe them in the drifts Of cloud, and rare reveal them unto men— For Zeus there hath his dwelling, ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... swallowing it greedily. Dozens of vultures hovered overhead, and, watching their opportunity, dived down every now and again and tore a piece of flesh from the carcass with their powerful beaks, and then hurried off, making unearthly noises which, joined to the howls of the jackals, made the most awful ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... uncomplaining grief; For, sick of life's vacuity, She neither sought nor wished relief. And daily from her cheek, the glow Departed, and her virgin brow Was curtained with a mournful gloom,— A shade prophetic, of the tomb; And her clear eyes, so blue and bright, Shot forth a keen, unearthly light, As if the soul that in them lay, Were weary of its garb of clay, And prayed to pass from earth away; Nor was that prayer vain, for ere The frozen monarch of the year, Had blighted, with his icy breath, A single bud in summer's wreath, They shrouded her, and made her grave, And laid her down ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... painful sense of cruel buffeting left him only half-conscious. There was a roar in his ears like the bombardment of unearthly artillery. It filled his brain to the exclusion of all else, while he hugged the girl close in his arms with some instinct of saving her, and shielding her from the cruel blows ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... difficulties. He has thoughts of his own, truly human, deeply religious, and thoroughly national; and there are expressions and comparisons in his poetry which had never been used before. His style, however, is lengthy, his descriptions tiresome, and his characters somewhat vague and unearthly. As critics, we should have to bestow on Wolfram von Eschenbach, on Gottfried von Strassburg, even on Hartman von Aue and Walther von der Vogelweide, as much of blame as of praise. But as historians, we cannot value them too highly. ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... an uproar of unearthly yells from seven hundred savage throats, mingled with a clattering salute of musketry, told the Frenchmen that the expected reinforcement had come. Soon a crowd of warriors mustered for the attack. Cautiously they advanced, screeching, leaping, and firing as they ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... tragical face, and complains that it is a base and soulless world. At this very moment, I make no doubt, he is requiring that under the masks of a Pantaloon or a Punch there should be a soul glowing with unearthly desires and ideal aspirations, and that Harlequin should outmoralize Hamlet on the nothingness of sublunary things: and if these expectations are disappointed, as they can never fail to be, the dew is ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... Domingo Gate, we burned a blue-light, which was immediately answered by another in-shore of us. In the glare we could perceive two boats, full of men. Any one who has ever played at snapdragon, can imagine the unearthly appearance of objects when seen by this species of firework. In the present instance it was held aloft on a boat-hook, and cast a strong spectral light on the band of lawless ruffians, who were so crowded together that they entirely ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... in fright utter most unearthly yells, and they are joined in them by all who sleep near. The first imagines himself seized by a wild beast, the rest roar because they hear him doing it: this indicates the extreme ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... daze, a sound grew out of all the noises of the village; a long mellow note, like the note of a deep-toned hunting-horn, vibrant yet steady, filling every cranny of the air. At once she knew it was this that had awakened her. It hung a moment, sweet, unearthly, haunting; and dropped back into an outburst of fierce clamor that leaped at it as hounds leap at a stag. Eldris put out her hand ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... mind to revert to ghosts; but he was comforted by hearing the slow, distant foot-fall of the policeman. On it came, not unlike the supposed step of an unearthly visitant, until the guardian of the night stood revealed before him on the other ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... face. It was dark and cold under the mountain shadows, the frosty chill of the high altitude wrapped me round, the solitude was overwhelming, and I reluctantly turned my horse's head towards Truckee, often looking back to the ashy summits in their unearthly fascination. Eastwards the look of the scenery was changing every moment, while the lake for long remained "one burnished sheet of living gold," and Truckee lay utterly out of sight in a hollow filled with lake and cobalt. Before long a carnival of color began which I can only describe ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... then by a flash of that unearthly light, the wind descending like the last of days. I hastened with Vesty to the low beach, where the people were moving strangely, looking out on the sea ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... clanking of sabres. Alone could be heard the dull stroke of the shoeless hoof, or at intervals the neigh of an impatient steed, suddenly checked by a reproof from his rider. Silently they passed on—silent as spectres. The full moon gleaming upon them added to their unearthly appearance! ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... she came quickly toward him, struck Dale as almost unearthly. She was within a few yards of him when she saw him. A rich colour flushed her face as she recognized him and her ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... his spirit fell, Before th' unearthly train; For he knew Valhalla's daughters well, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... there came out of the East a beam of unearthly light,—a triumph of possible good in evil so strange that the workers hardly believed it. Slowly they saw the gates of Ellis Island closing, slowly the footsteps of the yearly million men became fainter and fainter, until the stream of immigrants ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... inside, for our captain, with a loud cry to God, bade the helmsman steer nor'ards away fra' th' mouth o' Hell. We all saw wi' our own eyes, inside that fearsome wall o' ice—seventy miles long, as we could swear to—inside that gray, cold ice, came leaping flames, all red and yellow wi' heat o' some unearthly kind out o' th' very waters o' the sea; making our eyes dazzle wi' their scarlet blaze, that shot up as high, nay, higher than th' ice around, yet never so much as a shred on 't was melted. They did say that some beside our captain saw the black devils dart hither and thither, quicker ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... architectural magnificence above ground, among men who cared little for the things of time and sense, because life itself had not a moment's security, were nevertheless nourished thoughts of ideal beauty and unearthly grandeur, which afterwards yielded such glorious fruit in the Christian art of Italy. The frescoes of the Catacombs are the feeble beginnings of an artistic inspiration which culminated in the "Last Supper" of Leonardo da Vinci, and ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... only looked up at him. The subdued light of the half-darkened hall softened as with an almost unearthly beauty the upturned face, and forth from it her eyes shone, glowed with the lustre of a radiant tenderness, too vast, too overwhelming for ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... four legs, was truly wonderful. He never did attempt to bite, and he was only once guilty of barking; but during the grandmother exhibition he could not help throwing up his head and giving a prolonged and unearthly howl. But the naughty baby only laughed quite merrily over the howl, and the two children begged of Snip- snap to do it again. He never did howl any more—that was his last despairing protest—in future he submitted to the baby's caprices, but with the air ...
— Dickory Dock • L. T. Meade
... displeased with her for coming to him at this unearthly hour. 'I should like to stay here too, if you will ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... to Frank, and the two talked it over solemnly while they sat on inverted feed buckets beside the stable, facing the unearthly beauty of a cloud-piled Idaho sunset. They did not feel that they could afford to sell a cow, and two-year-old steers were out of the question. They decided to sell an unbroken colt that a cow-puncher fancied. In a week Brit wrote a brief, ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... variety of the objects which come under the care of the librarian, all of which are to be classified and reduced to order. These include not only books upon every earthly subject (and very many upon unearthly ones) but a possibly wide range of newspapers and periodicals, a great mass of miscellaneous pamphlets, sometimes of maps and charts, of manuscripts and broadsides, and frequently collections of engravings, photographs, ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... but a moment, but it was a terrible time to Edmund, and he found himself, in spite of his efforts, completely nonplussed by the unearthly foe beside him. ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... were after them, swarms of savages began to pour into the valley in the rear of the troops, about a half a mile west of them. They soon massed in great numbers, and rapidly closed every avenue of escape, riding in bands and giving vent to the most horrid war-whoops and unearthly yells ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... which he said constantly—for he carried his beads loose in his trousers' pockets that he might tell them as he walked the streets—transformed themselves into coronals of flowers of such vague unearthly texture that they seemed to him as hueless and odourless as they were nameless. He offered up each of his three daily chaplets that his soul might grow strong in each of the three theological virtues, in faith in the Father Who had created him, in hope ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... the heavens were so overcast that the gloom was like night itself. At the same time the darkness had a ghastly tinge which made the faces of the boys, when they looked at each other, livid and unearthly. ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... full course and power without the highest direction. The minds of the residents of the Hill are very suggestible; but the persons who have the power to implant the suggestion are no longer inspired as of old, with a sublime and unearthly ideal. They are only animated with an economic one. But the result is the same. It is social, rather than religious. It was one thing for the early Friends to cement together a community through the feeling that in every man was the Spirit of God. A wonderful appetite was ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... that appalling face, with its ghastly discolouration of sickness, its hideous deformity of feature, its fierce and changeless malignity of expression glaring full on me in the piercing noonday sunshine—glaring with the same unearthly look of fury and triumph which I had seen flashing through the flashing lightning, when I parted from him on the night of the storm—struck me speechless where I stood, and has never left me since. I must not, I dare not, describe that frightful sight; though it now rises before ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... thought, should be introduced in opera. Not the drum, the bugle, or the fife, though these are thrilling, after their fashion; but the music of modern ordnance and projectile, the beautiful whistle of the minie-ball, the howl of shell that makes unearthly havoc with the air, the whiz-z-z of solid shot, the chirp of bullets, the scream of grape and canister, the yell of immense conical cylinders, that fall like redhot stoves ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... dreary sky, Dusky shadows growing deeper, sad night-breezes sorrowing by, Sighing 'mid the leafless bushes bending o'er the sullen stream, Wailing 'mid the fire-stained ruins darkly rising 'gainst the gleam Of the wild unearthly twilight. In the shivering evening air Cheerless lie the gloomy meadows—blight and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... sequence of spiritual adventures. He was dog-tired. But his brain was furiously out of hand: no stopping it. And the night was stifling. And all the while, in the dead silence, as though his soul had ears, there was a sound. It was a very faint, unearthly sound, and seemed to come from nowhere, yet to have a meaning. He feared he was ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... from the side of a fire, gripping a rifle and kicking the embers into a blaze. He saw the man struggling with the horse and fired. The colt with one unearthly scream of terror leaped and plunged head down towards the water, shot dead through his ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... could hear the sound in the distance—the thunder of the captains of the storm and the shouting; but still so faint, so vague, so indeterminate and unearthly that it seemed like the sound in ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... Hollyhock, 'it will be soon over, my bonnie Lightning Speed;' and the horse, disturbed a little at first by the unearthly glamour over everything, soon calmed down and made straight for the gorge up which rider and steed were to mount, in order to accomplish that awful leap from rock to rock, which they must take twice in order that Hollyhock ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... crank, and the thing gave just one unearthly, agonizing groan and, I imagined, rolled its eyes back, and gasping for ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... solemn, unearthly sound of the muffled voice of the owl, warns dreamers that death creeps closely in the wake of health and joy. Precaution should be taken that life is not ruthlessly exposed to his unyielding grasp. Bad tidings of the absent ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... transfiguration of the grey city as should reveal its line of warehouses lying along the horizon in a mist of splendour like the walls of the New Jerusalem. So I had seen it before, marvellous and refined in unearthly fire: but to-day, in a sadder mood, and hungering more deeply for the vision, I looked out to the west in vain. For the wind had set in from the east, and driven back upon the town a zone of iron-grey smoke, ragged along its upper edge ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... exercises are on. They will continue until Frank Sundell shaves his last customer and gets up to the hall with his trombone. You can tell when he comes. He pulls the slide in and out a couple of times with an unearthly chromatic grunt, and then there is a deep, pregnant silence. They ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... them, Waiting the unutterable moment of their loss Or utmost gain, as tho' the swinging earth Was emptied of all life, the very air Seemed hollow and unearthly, breathless pause On a great brink. They reached the pool, and Taka Gathered her senses till her eyes were clear As shining wells of truth. She leaned no more Helpless upon Malua, tho' his arm Circled her still. Before them on the path, Noble and dead, with mute hands pleading, eyes Subtle ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay
... you sure that Mahaud will not wake?" "Her eyes are closed as now my fist I make; She is in mystic and unearthly sleep; The potion still its power o'er her must keep." "But she will surely wake at break ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... held in check I crouched there, straining my ears for a repetition of this unearthly sound that was like nothing I had ever heard before,—a quick, light, tapping chink, now in rhythm, now out, now ceasing, now recommencing, so that I almost doubted but that this wood must be ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... the far side of the desk confronted him like some unearthly Judge from whose heart pity, humanity, and all else but righteous ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... supposed to be Pompeiian and Rita and I had often laughed at the delirious fancy of some enriched shopkeeper. But still it was a display of fancy, a sign of grace; but at that moment these figures appeared to me weird and intrusive and strangely alive in their attenuated grace of unearthly beings concealing a power to see ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... torn and bespattered with mud; the water ran and dripped from him to form little muddy pools on the floor; only his rifle and powder horn were dry. His face was ghastly white except where a bullet wound appeared on his temple, from which the blood had oozed down over his cheek. An unearthly light gleamed from his eyes. In that moment Wetzel ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... this island is not that transient moment of unearthly bliss, which, in our less favoured regions, always leaves us so thoughtful and so sad; on the contrary, it lasts many hours, and consequently the Islanders are neither moody nor sorrowful. As they sleep during ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... orb dipped to the horizon a solid pile of unearthly clouds came up from the southeast; their bodies were singularly and unnaturally black, and mottled with copper-color, and hemmed with a fiery yellow. And these infernal clouds towered up their heads, pressing forward as if they all strove ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... chops. "Is this remorse," she queried, "or a convivially induced requirement for bromides? At this unearthly hour of the morning it is very often ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... a barbaric splendor and persuasive unreality never before heard of in English. No such profusion of color, oriental splendor of detail, grotesque combinations and mystical effects had ever before been wrought into language. There are tales as grotesque, as monstrous, unearthly as the stone griffens and gargoyles that are cut up among the unvisited niches and towers of Notre Dame, stories as poetic and delicately beautiful as the golden lace work chased upon an Etruscan ring. He fitted ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... song-bird, and what we jeeringly call a fiddle into what we mention with respect as a violin. From that grinding lilt, with which the blind man, seeking pence, accompanies the beat of paddle wheels across the ferry, there is surely a difference rather of kind than of degree to that unearthly voice of singing that bewails and praises the destiny of man at the touch of the true virtuoso. Even that you may perhaps enjoy; and if you do so you will own it impossible to enjoy it more keenly than here, im Schnee der ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... high rising above them. The inhabitants were naked savages. While stopping at a village on the right bank, they received a visit from the chief of the Nuehr tribe and a number of his followers. They were most unearthly-looking fellows; even the young women were destitute of clothing, though the married had a fringe made of grass round their loins. The men wore heavy coils of beads about their necks, two heavy bracelets of ivory on the upper portions of their arms, copper rings upon the wrist, and a horrible ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... circumstance" of the Pot of Basil, the Indian Maid nursing her luxurious sorrow, the congealing Beads-man and the palsied beldame Angela—these and a thousand quaintnesses of phrase moved him to a gush of glorious mirth. It was not that he did not appreciate the poet, but the unearthly strangeness of it all, the delicate contradiction of laws and behaviours known to freshmen, tickled his keen wits and emotions until they brimmed into puzzled laughter. ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... An unearthly glitter, like the coloring of a dream, wavered in the East and West, while the North thickened and the South lay still in brilliant expectation.... In some hall-way when Bedient was a little boy, he recalled a light like this of the West and East. There had been a long ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... his hands in terror to his brow; he felt as if wrapped in flames, as if fire were rising from his brain; the chains rattled around him with unearthly sounds. "The slightest error, the least forgetfulness would endanger my plan. I will be quiet—I will repeat once more all that we have agreed upon. But first away with these slavish chains, to-morrow I shall be a free man; I will ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... and told him to "screw his courage up to the sticking-place, and he would not fail." Then he took his dagger, and, according to Shakspeare, made a long speech over it, a speech which, I am sorry to say, stage-struck boys and girls have been mouthing in a most unearthly manner ever since the days of ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... unpleasing, which, upon a nearer inspection, seemed to indicate the habitual prevalence and indulgence of evil passions, and a power of expressing mere animal anger, with an intenseness that I have seldom seen equalled, and to which an almost unearthly effect was given by the convulsive quivering of the sightless eyes. You may easily suppose that it was no very pleasing reflection to me to consider, that whenever caprice might induce her to return, I was within the reach of this violent, and, for aught I knew, insane ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... did not tell each other what reserve of courage remained to us, or of strength. We sat and looked at the peaks immeasurably above us, and at the veils of rain between them, and at the black background of the sky. Nor was there anything in the landscape which did not seem to us unearthly and forlorn. ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... the next moment, revealing the spectacle on stage and floor in all its tinsel magnificence—snow-nymphs, polar-bears, all capering madly until an unearthly shriek heralded the coming of a favorite clown, who tumbled all the way down the stage steps and continued hysterically turning flip-flaps, cart-wheels, and somersaults until he landed with a crash at the foot ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... I should buy it if the price was five shillings,' said Williams; 'but for some unearthly reason he wants two guineas for it. I can't conceive why. It's a wretched engraving, and there aren't even any ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... the bell of the iron church suggested an idea. 'She is just the little saint of a thing to be always off to church at unearthly hours. I'll catch her there—if only that black coat ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... time the sun is very near the horizon, setting in a roseate sky over a lagoon of jade. There is not a ripple. The tide is very low. Sea birds fleck with white the vast fields of mud. The peacefulness of it all under such unearthly beauty is ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... in the light of a young ogress. Her efforts in this line, however, were brought to an abrupt close by an untoward accident, which quenched her ardor. Other models failing her for a time, she undertook to cast her own pretty foot, and the family were one day alarmed by an unearthly bumping and screaming and running to the rescue, found the young enthusiast hopping wildly about the shed with her foot held fast in a pan full of plaster, which had hardened with unexpected rapidity. ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... which is long, and more than half hiding his expressive, Jewish face; all these rendered him the most extraordinary person I ever beheld. There is something scriptural in the tout ensemble of the strange physiognomy of this uncouth and unearthly figure. Not that, as in times of old, he plays, as Holy Writ tells us, on a ten-stringed instrument; on the contrary, he brings the most powerful, the most wonderful, and the most heart-rending tones from one string. His name is Paganini; he is very improvident and very poor. The D——s, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... not say anything; she bent over, without repugnance, and gathered the shadowy shape into her strong young arms, and kissed the wasted face whose unearthly coolness was like the leaf of a flower against her lips. "He never gave me a moment's trouble," said the mother, "and I'm sure he'll make you happy. How kind of you not to be afraid ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Fortunately it was a trifle ajar, and it went open before me with a thud. Also from behind it a most unmistakable human grunt emanated, the sort of involuntary notice a person gives when he has the wind suddenly knocked out of him. Then right in my ears there sounded the most weird, unearthly cry that I ever heard; it was positively uncanny. A cold chill went through ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... the centre of the cabin, and the shadows flickering slowly over him gave an unearthly aspect to his tall, gaunt figure, as he stood with uplifted arm, pale face, ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... and point out their danger, they will jest and joke at you. By and by he says: "I think I hear the rapids—yes, I hear them roar;" and he seizes his oars and pulls with all his strength, but the current is too great, and nearer and nearer he is drawn on to that abyss, until he gives one unearthly scream, and over he goes. Ah, my friends, this is the case with hundreds in this city. They are in the current of riches of pleasure, of drink, that will take them ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... necessary. Still it is a fault. The supernatural agents excite an interest; but it is not the interest which is proper to supernatural agents. We feel that we could talk to the ghosts and demons without any emotion of unearthly awe. We could, like Don Juan, ask them to supper, and eat heartily in their company. Dante's angels are good men with wings. His devils are spiteful, ugly executioners. His dead men are merely living men in strange situations. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... been prepared for violence, he had expected tears.... The vision of a blubbering idiot, that mowed and mumbled, its wig awry, its dreadful face blotched, like a clown's, with paint, swaddled from head to toe in gorgeous furs, leaning desperately upon the very reed it had broken—this was unearthly, hellish. He found himself praying that it might not visit him in ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... followed by an unearthly caterwaul and the sudden appearance of a dark object in the air, which, issuing from the door of the hut, flew upwards like a sky-rocket, described a wide curve, and fell heavily about fifty yards out into the lake. Next moment Freydissa sprang ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... him from every boat, seemed only intent on annihilating each separate plank of which those boats were made. But skillfully manoeuvred, incessantly wheeling like trained charges in the field; the boats for a while eluded him; though, at times, but by a plank's breadth; while all the time, Ahab's unearthly slogan tore every other cry but his ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... ill-omen'd shriek; Commotions strange disturb the rustling trees; And heavy plaints come on the passing breeze. Far on the lonely waste, and distant way, Unwonted sounds are heard, unknown of day. With shrilly screams the haunted cavern rings; And heavy treading of unearthly things Sounds loud and hollow thro' the ruin'd dome; Yea, voices issue ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... the stars into being out of chaos. To regain that spiritual consciousness, with its untrammelled ecstasy, is the hope of every mystic. That ecstasy is the poetic passion.... The act which is inspired by the Holy Breath must needs speak of things which have no sensuous existence, of hopes all unearthly, and fires of which the colors ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... eh, eh, eh, of tree toads. They were sitting by the stream and in cracks among the rocks, puffing out their pouched throats like toy balloons and raising, a shrill, haunting chorus. Their thin voices intermingled in an insistent, unearthly refrain as if the spirits of the dead had come again to gibber by the pool. Even the scales and trills of Drusilla had ceased, so hot ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... eruption and then spout whole rivers of boiling water. In the Upper Geyser Basin the effect is very impressive, particularly upon a cool morning. The clouds of steam and the throbbing or roaring geysers lend to the region a weird and unearthly aspect. ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... appearance—were they bred for mental rather than physical qualities? Otherwise why the pedigree, why the rigid castes, the isolation of women? I shuddered as the whole logical, inevitable explanation unfolded. It was uncanny, unearthly, yet perfectly scientific; a thing the world had speculated about for centuries, a thing that every school boy knew could be done, and yet which I, facing the fact that it had been done, could only believe by a ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... foes. Such flowers as are possessed of keen energy, as are painful to the touch, as grow on trees and plants having thorns, and as are either bloody-red or black, should be offered to (evil) spirits and unearthly beings. Such flowers as gladden the mind and heart, as are very agreeable when pressed, and as are of beautiful form, have been said, O lord, to be worthy of being offered to human beings. Such flowers as grow on cemeteries and crematoria, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... their weapons—clubs spears, bows, and arrows, or the long, slender blowguns, consisting merely of a hollow reed. Women and children there were, too, also dancing and leaping about, howling at the tops of their voices. Above the unearthly din could be heard the noise of the drums and tom-toms, while, as the adventurers drew up in front of their airship, there came a sort of chant, and a line of natives, dressed fantastically in the skins of beasts, came filing out ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... and although a pronunciamento (a fashionable term here for a revolution) was prognosticated, we found everything very quiet and orderly, and the ball very gay and crowded. As we came in, and were giving our tickets, a number of masks came springing by, shrieking out our names in their unearthly voices. Captain G——, brother of Lord ——-, came to our box; also a scion of La jeune France, M. de C——, who condescendingly kept his hat on during the whole evening. In a box directly above us were the French legation who arrived lately. Amongst ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... poignancy. As for the boys, they are interesting. Evidently, the piece is an authentic document, but early as it was composed it displayed the principal characteristics of its author: Freakishness, an abnormal sense of the grotesque—witness that unearthly last scene, which must be taken as an hallucination—and its swift movement; also a vivid sense of caricature—consider the trial scene in the school; but created by a young poet of potential gifts. The seduction ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... her head like a pupil before her master, but she needs must look him in the eyes, and her voice came strangely and unearthly to ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... An unearthly stillness followed the deafening noise of the shots. The fog poured in at the doorway as he stood there hoping that the noise had reached the ears of some chance passer-by. He stood so for a few minutes, and then, ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... and secret lonelinesses, She shades the bloom of her unearthly days; And the soft winds alone have power to woo her: Far off we catch the dark gleam of her tresses; And wild birds haunt the wood-walks where she strays, Intelligible music ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... he saw on awaking? Had he really died, and was this unearthly place a vestibule of the infernal regions? Days and nights of anguish, burning, and delirium, relieved at intervals by the same death-like stupor, had passed over him; and here he lay at length, exhausted, the terrible ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... cot near the table, and having bolstered him up, we took tea together. He asked the blessing, and did it with his right hand upraised, and in a tone that struck me to the heart. It was the same tremulous, yet urgent, and I had almost said, unearthly voice, with which my aged grandfather used to pray. We now began to notice that brightening of the mental faculties, which I had heard spoken of, in persons ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... of mauve tore at curtains of purplish flame. Something like northern lights, they glinted and gleamed, wrestled and writhed. There was no peace up there in that abandoned sky. But there was enough of that unearthly light glimmering below for him to watch ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... had loved life, not as Emily loved it, like an equal, with power over it and pride and an unearthly understanding, virgin and unafraid. There was something slightly subservient, consciously inferior, in Charlotte's attitude to life. She had loved it secretly, with a sort of shame, with a corroding passion and incredulity and despair. Such natures are not seldom victims of the power they ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... gothic; he made Bach his chief god and within the woven walls of his strange harmonies he sings the history of a soul, a soul convulsed by antique madness, by the memory of awful things, a soul lured by Beauty to secret glades wherein sacrificial rites are performed to the solemn sounds of unearthly music. Like Maurice de Guerin, Chopin perpetually strove to decipher Beauty's enigma and passionately demanded of the sphinx ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... reach and sight, he puts on a tragical face, and complains that it is a base and soulless world. At this moment, I doubt not, he is exacting, that under the masks of a Pantaloon and a Pulcinello there should be a heart glowing with unearthly desires and ideal aspirations, and that Harlequin should out moralise Hamlet upon the nothingness of sublunary things; and should it not be so, the dew will rise into his eyes, and he will turn his back on the ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... getting up at such unearthly hours!" cried Patsy cheerfully. "But I don't mind it in the least, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... attorney had never come, and Bas never failed to come as regularly as sunrise or sunset. His face was growing more and more hateful to her with an unearthly and obsessing antipathy. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... understood it, to obtain a measurably accurate estimate of the number of warriors in the band. Himself a very Indian in stealth, he drew nearer the camp-fire, when suddenly there rang out upon the night air—not a rifle-shot, but the unearthly braying ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... often beyond it. A descent through rice-fields and desas skirts the serrated cliffs of Gedeh's northward side, though tree-ferns growing in thousands afford shelter from the daily showers. The sudden passion of tropical rain dies away, leaving an atmosphere of unearthly transparency. Gedeh, carved in amethyst, leans against a primrose sky, streaked by the puff of white smoke from the crater. Villagers returning from work brighten the road with patches of scarlet and yellow; children, clad only in necklaces ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... love. Love's heaven, without its hell; the golden fruit Without the foul husk, which at Adam's fall Did crust it o'er with filth and selfishness. I tempt thee heavenward—from yon azure walls Unearthly beauties beckon—God's own mother Waits ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... A faint, unearthly music rings From you to Heaven — it is not far! A mist about your beauty clings Like a thin cloud before ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... rafts were hurried down the stream, or whirled against each other, soon produced a terrific scene of tumult and confusion. As soon as the first boats approached the land, the Gauls assembled to oppose them rushed down upon them with showers of missiles, and with those unearthly yells which barbarous warriors always raise in going into battle, as a means both of exciting themselves and of terrifying their enemy. Hannibal's officers urged the boats on, and endeavored, with as much coolness and deliberation as possible, to effect a landing. It is ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... upon the incandescent globe-studded column, as in a trance, and again one of the electricians turned on the current and the shaft changed to living fire. The man seemed horrified by the unearthly beauty of the spectacle. It continued but a minute, when the current was turned off and the blinding light disappeared almost as suddenly as it ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... it was, of an unearthly yellow-orange brilliance. The midday sun was no more dazzling to the eye. Out it stretched from the island into the vapors of the Great Red Spot, only touching the stone rim of the island at one thin point. Its liquid fires were waveless ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... of heavy guns; the baleful glare of portfires and fireballs flung down the hill by the enemy to enable them more clearly to ascertain our position, and the incessant flash of the cannon, cast a fierce, unearthly light upon the scene. Again, again, and again came the hissing storm of iron, each time with more deadly effect; the ground before and around us was ploughed and gashed by the rushing shot; our men were swept away before ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... imagined when, calling one afternoon on him and having to wait a little, I had noticed lying on his desk a crayon sketch of a woman's face. It was a very lovely face, the features almost perfect, and yet there was about it something unearthly and spectral that ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... read far-off signs painted in black letters upon brick walls. Church spires stood up, bathed in a wild glory, pointing as out of some day of doom, into the everlasting rest. The stars showed like points of clear, green, unearthly radiance, against that ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... eyes in the case of a person of strong individuality, then there is a chance that I may be visited this night by Elijah Raven his ghost. But his owlish countenance never appeared between me and that patch of pale dim light; nor did I ever feel a breath of cold unearthly ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... in a church across the harbor. Behind me, in the kitchen, I heard my wife singing. Sometimes now her spirits were fitfully high, and then she would sing the old songs of her girlhood. But even in her singing was something strange, as if a wailing, unearthly cry rang through it. Nothing about her was sadder than that ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... justice notwithstanding the threatening danger of death, the imminence of which is moreover due to a kind of particular contest with his persecutors. Hence Cyprian says in a sermon (Ep. ad Mart. et Conf. ii): "The crowd of onlookers wondered to see an unearthly battle, and Christ's servants fighting erect, undaunted in speech, with souls unmoved, and strength divine." Wherefore it is evident that martyrdom is an act of fortitude; for which reason the Church reads ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... the country, followed by the neighbors, and accompanied by the parish priest of Cong. The day was very wet even for Ireland. After the burial service was over the women, kneeling by the new made grave, among the rank wet grass, and the dripping ivy, raised the caoine. It was a most unearthly sound, sweet like singing, sad like crying, rising up among the ruined towers, and clinging ivy and floating up heavenwards. I believe the stories of banshees must have arisen from the sound of the caoine. These mourning women were very skilful, I was told, and were relations of the dead whom ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... understood, he lifted his white, sharp head and uttered a bark or howl that was like nothing so much as a haunting, unearthly mourn. The animal then merged into the white, as if he were really a spirit of the world whence his cry seemed ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... there was a stir of life in all the tents. Pancho had come from the stage-station with mail; an odour of breakfast issued from the kitchen, where Hop Yet was humming a fragment of Chinese song, that ran something like this,—not loud, but unearthly enough, as Bell used to say, to spoil almost ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... will take good care of her, I know. My darling, good-by! I go on to Dashford, and home by return train in an hour. God bless you, my Hilda! Courage! Up, Guards, and at them! Remember Waterloo!" and he was gone. The engine shrieked an unearthly "Good-by!" and the train rumbled away, leaving Hilda gazing after it through a mist which only her strong will prevented from dissolving ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... man of great fame, and hungry, for more still, he tries to measure himself against the greatest men in the land, but nothing comes of these trials, for he is being reserved for a greater deed than the dealing with mere men; his enemy is Glam the thrall; the revenant of a strange, unearthly man who was himself killed by an evil spirit; Grettir contends with, and slays, this monster, whose dying curse on him is the turning-point ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... and thither bewildered. Ulick looked eagerly, then suddenly vaulted over the gate, went forward a few steps, looked again, pointed towards some dark object which she could barely discern, put his finger in his ear, and uttered an unearthly screech, incomprehensible to her, but well understood by the huntsman, and through him by the dogs, which at once simultaneously dashed in one direction, and came pouring into the meadow over towards him, down went their heads, up went their curved tails, the clatter ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sculptors,—she had never thought about herself at all, not even to compare her fair brilliancy of skin with the bronzed, weather-beaten faces of the fisher-folk among whom she dwelt. Resting her delicate classic head against the encircling arm of her lover and lord, her beauty seemed almost unearthly in its pure transparency of feature, outlined by the silver glimmer of the moonbeams; and the young man by her side, with his handsome dark head, tall figure and distinguished bearing, looked the fitting mate for her fair, blossoming womanhood. No two lovers were ever more ideally ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... how it was, that in honor and good conscience we had effected it, but somehow, methought our part in this sickening warfare was accomplished, and we were home again. Oh the joy of it! oh the joy of it! Even amid my dream, methought we questioned its reality, so unearthly in its perfectness, it seemed. We stood upon the college-green, and the sun was going down with a strange, darkling splendor; and from afar, ever and anon came the thunder roll of battle; but we had nought to do with ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... muriatic acid vapour that environed me before I could reach the upper edge. I sat down in a nook, though it was a very hot one, and made a sketch or two of the appearance of the crater. But I feel that it is quite beyond my power either by pen or pencil, to convey an idea of the weird unearthly aspect which the funnel-shaped crater of Vesuvius presented at that time. An eruption of unusual violence had occurred shortly before I saw it. Great rounded blocks of lava had been thrown high into ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... and started up from it much later than he had intended, having had the talk with Lolita again in the room with the curtains. It was nine when he set out for the short-cut under the moon, dazed by his increasing torture. The brilliant disk, blurring to the eye, showed the mountains unearthly plain, beautiful, and tall in the night. By-and-by a mule fell and could not rise, and Genesmere decided it was as well for all to rest again. The next he knew it was blazing sunshine, and the sky ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... eyes she stared at him, and he stared at something which lest she also should see, she dared not turn her head. Surely, she thought afterwards, she must have been that moment in the presence of something unearthly! Her physical being was wrenched from her control, and she must simply sit and wait until the power or influence, whichever it might be, should pass away. How long it was ere it relaxed its hold she could not tell; it could not have been long, ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... youthful faces and powdered hair. These appeared to me exactly like ghosts, who, when I was alone in the room, seemed to come back to life, and filled me with the most abject fear. To sleep alone in this distant chamber, in that old-fashioned bed of state, beneath those unearthly pictures, was a constant terror to me. It is true I tried to hide my fear from my aunt when she lighted me to bed in the evening with her candle, but never a night passed in which I was not a prey to the most horrible ghostly visions, my dread of which would ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... startling effects, which please at first from their novelty, but will not bear a calm, critical analysis. On its first appearance, The Course of Time was immensely popular; but it has steadily lost favor, and its highest flights are "unearthly flutterings" when compared with the powerful soarings of Milton's imagination and the gentle harmonies of Cowper's religious muse. Pollok died early of consumption: his youth and his disease account for the faults ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... five fleeing Indians. Soon after crossing Sycamore creek they were surprised by a terrific war whoop from the Indians, who were concealed in the bushes near by, and with deadly aim commenced firing into the front ranks of the regiment, and with unearthly yells (as one of the fleeing party told us on arriving at Galena), charged upon our ranks, with tomahawks raised, ready to slaughter all who might come within their reach. Judging from the yelling of the Indians, their number was variously estimated ...
— Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk • Black Hawk |
