"Starless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... possessions he was abandoning. He let his little taper die out by the hearth, and then crept toward the glimmer of the window, and looked out again. The conservatories and the dairies and the barns showed plain in the gray of the moonless, starless night; in the coachman's quarters a little point of light appeared for a moment through the window, and ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... the faint light waxes fainter,—it sinks beneath the dim, undefined horizon; the first scene of the drama closes upon the seer; and he sits awhile on his hill-top in darkness, solitary but not sad, in what seems to be a calm and starless night. ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... It was cloudy and starless, with a chill mist hanging over the valley; but my uncle's cob was a swift one, and we soon began to ascend the hill up past the castle, and then, turning to the left, drove along a steep, rough by-road which led to the south of the wood and out across ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... life. Wounded and fallen, trampled in the mire and mud of the conflict, then the ranks closed again and left no place for her. So she crawled aside to die. With a past whose black despair was as the shadow of a starless night, a future which her early religious training lit up with the lurid light of hell, and the strong bands of a pitiless death dragging her to the grave—still she craved, as the awful hour drew near, to see once more the home of her innocent childhood. Not that she thought to ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... tissue, as it were, of large stars spread over another of very small ones, the intermediate magnitudes being wanting, and the conclusion here seems equally evident that in such cases we look through two sidereal sheets separated by a starless interval. ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... shall invade; * Save thy love and thyself naught shall stay in such stead; O thou, whose brilliancy lights his brow, * Shaped like sandhill-tree with his locks for shade, Forbid Heaven my like to aught else incline * Save you whose beauties none like display'd: Art thou no amongst mortals a starless moon * O beauty the dazzle of day ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... going on perpetually from age to age, waves rolling forever, and winds moaning forever, and faithful hearts trusting and sickening forever, and brave lives dashed away about the rattling beach like weeds forever; and still at the helm of every lonely boat, through starless night and hopeless dawn, His hand, who spread the fisher's net over the dust of the Sidonian palaces, and gave into the fisher's hand the keys of the ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... lost and be found again; but that when he stays lost, and is neither dead nor mad, it is because he wants to be lost. So where was to be the gain in finding 'Thanase alive? Oh, much, indeed, to Bonaventure! The star of a new hope shot up into his starless sky when that thought came, and in that star trembled that which he had not all these weary months of search dared see even with fancy's eye,—the image of Zosephine! This—this! that he had never set out to achieve—this! if he could but stand face to face with evidence ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... stillness brooded over the city. The night was starless, the sea black as ink. Stephanie stood alone in the darkness of her balcony, and listened ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... dawn, Caesar, tired of not sleeping, got up and started to take a walk in the corridor. It was raining; on the horizon, below the black, starless sky, a vague clarity began to appear. Caesar took out his Proudhon book and immersed himself ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... revelation came to her—there was no denial, since they loved. Sense, indeed, was wholly put aside, but love has nothing to do with sense, being wholly of the soul. Shaken with wonder, she trembled as she sat in her chair, staring out into the starless night. ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... worth our while to wait two, or it may be three, turnings of the hour-glass, for the conclusion of the lecture. Therefore, by my control over light and darkness, I cause the dusk, and then the starless night, to brood over the street; and summon forth again the bellman, with his lantern casting a gleam about his footsteps, to pace wearily from corner to corner, and shout drowsily the hour to drowsy or dreaming ears. Happy are we, if for ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... all nights—even the starless night before dissolution—must wear away. About six o'clock, the hour which called up the household, I went out to the court, and washed my face in its cold, fresh well-water. Entering by the carre, a piece of mirror- glass, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... months later—by which time the party was drawing near to Santa Rosa, and the great railway survey was approaching completion— that in the dead of a dark and starless night three Indians stealthily approached the surveyors' camp and, having first reconnoitred the ground as carefully as the pitch darkness would permit, made their way, noiseless as shadows, to the tent occupied by young Escombe. The leading ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... and astonished the others by her rash boldness, her absolute contempt for danger and obstacles, and her strange and adroit strength. She charmed them also by a magic philter which came from her hair, which was darker that a starless night, from her large, black, coaxing, velvety eyes, that were concealed by the fringe of such long lashes that they curled upwards, from her scented skin, that was as soft as rice paper, and every touch of which was a suggestive ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... nose, by the light of a candle which he held himself. Yet he smelt it furtively before trying it with his lips, and denied himself a gulp till he was reassured. But soon the empty pannikin was held out for more. And it was the starless hour before dawn when Vanheimert tripped over Howie's legs and took a contented header into the corner from which he ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... are writ in gore, Nor written thus in vain— Thy triumphs tell of fame no more, Or deepen every stain: If thou hadst died as Honour dies, Some new Napoleon might arise, To shame the world again— But who would soar the solar height, To set in such a starless night?[ip] ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... world, whose first convex divides The luminous inferiour orbs, enclosed From Chaos, and the inroad of Darkness old, Satan alighted walks: A globe far off It seemed, now seems a boundless continent Dark, waste, and wild, under the frown of Night Starless exposed, and ever-threatening storms Of Chaos blustering round, inclement sky; Save on that side which from the wall of Heaven, Though distant far, some small reflection gains Of glimmering air less vexed with tempest loud: Here walked the Fiend at large in spacious field. ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... Weber was an old hand on the Plains, and notwithstanding the darkness and the generally stony nature of the ground, he presently discovered that the fresh trail of the wagons was missing. Thurstane tried to retrace his steps, but starless night had already fallen thick around him, and before long he had to come to a halt. He was opposite the mouth of the ravine; he was within five hundred yards of Clara, and raging because he could not find her. Suddenly Coronado's cooking fires flickered through the ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... believe that the flavour is more delicate in the smaller dose. He will not believe that to walk this unconscionable distance is merely to stupefy and brutalise himself, and come to his inn, at night, with a sort of frost on his five wits, and a starless night of darkness in his spirit. Not for him the mild luminous evening of the temperate walker! He has nothing left of man but a physical need for bedtime and a double nightcap; and even his pipe, if he be a smoker, will be savourless and disenchanted. It is ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the haunts of sacred literature, are inflictcd on our churches, lead us! According to them, Jesus Christ, instead of shining as the light of the world, extinguished the torches which his own prophets had kindled, and plunged mankind into the palpable darkness of a starless midnight! O Savior, in pity to thy suffering people, let thy temple be no longer used ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... tempests rave, I cannot rest at home, For then the billows deck his grave With flowers of snow-white foam; And here I pray till break of day Beneath night's starless dome." ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... wagon road between the dark green meadow land on either side. Egypt was in shadow—her sun behind the Libyan heights,—but the short twilight had not fallen. Overhead were the cooling depths of sky, as yet starless, but the river was breathing on the winds and the sibilant murmur of its waters began to talk above the sounds of the city. To the north, the south and the east was pastoral and desert quiet; to the west was the gradual subsidence of urban stir. Frogs were beginning ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... him, whipped by icy blasts— Gigantic chestnuts, without leaf or bird, And, like himself, grown old in that same place. Through the dark network of their undergrowth, Pallid his aspect; and the earth was brown. Starless and moonless, a rough winter's night Was letting down her lappets o'er the mist. This—nothing more: old Faun, ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... was very dark and starless, and he stood leaning up against a tree, when he heard the splash of oars from the landing-place, a short sharp order, and then the ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... which two palm trees grew. They had been tall and flourishing. One might see them from the court-room. But for a year they had been shedding their leaflets and turning sere. Tonight their yellow stems had clashed and whispered until the wind was down, leaving the night sullen, brooding, thick, starless, with dashes of rain and a raw chill on the ground that brought out all the malefic odors of the pavement. The window on the side toward the court was closed and curtained. The one overlooking the street was slightly open, and if the night-bird prowling toward the den he called his ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... the peaceful breast of Faith My troubled soul hath found repose, Free from the sad and starless gloom That ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... last, black as the brow of a Congo nigger, and starless as a company of travelling actors. I could not remain under the tree all night, that was certain; and so I left it, although I could scarcely see my hand before me. That hand, by the way, still tenaciously grasped the invaluable sixpence. Groping my way out of the Battery, ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... you for the drinks. Go to your homes and on soft beds may you sleep well; I'll go out and sleep on yonder bench in the night wind. A few more drinks, a few more drunkard's dreams, and I'll go out into the moonless, starless night of a ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... of justice, to the senate chamber, to the presidential chair. Take them with you thru the streets, along the highways, and over the unbeaten paths of your life. Take them with you down the rivers, and out into the storm driven sea. Chain them to the wheel of your ship, sail on thru the starless night alone. Trust them, for they are the initiative ...
— Supreme Personality • Delmer Eugene Croft
... heav'n is ravish'd from our eyes, And in redoubled peals the roaring thunder flies. Cast from our course, we wander in the dark. No stars to guide, no point of land to mark. Ev'n Palinurus no distinction found Betwixt the night and day; such darkness reign'd around. Three starless nights the doubtful navy strays, Without distinction, and three sunless days; The fourth renews the light, and, from our shrouds, We view a rising land, like distant clouds; The mountain-tops confirm the pleasing sight, And curling ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... the night every wavering shade of cloud and moving form of buffalo in the dim distance, that their sleepless eyes, strained and aching, failed to distinguish this moving mass that was so like the brown plains and starless sky that it could scarce be told from them. The night, too, was bitter; northern cold cut hardly chillier than this that parted the blaze of one hot day from the blaze of another. The sea-winds were blowing cruelly keen, and men who at noon gladly stripped ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... yet some part of what he felt and did These lines must needs disclose. As he stood there, Breathing soft odors from the mellow air, All hopes, all aims of noble knighthood seemed Like the dim yesterdays of one who dreamed, In starless caves of memory sunken deep, And, like lost music, folded in ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... was gliding through a vast hall, he fell asleep. When he awoke, he found that the boat was floating on the black, glassy surface of an immense underground ocean. All signs of the cavern had disappeared. Far away, over the edge of this ocean, a strange, beautiful glow mounted into the starless sky of the underworld. And while the Prince was gazing at the glow, the boat swung into a new current, and was borne swiftly toward the light. In a short time the light grew so wide and bright that one would ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... the log house by the Spring Waiontha, lantern in hand and my packet tucked beneath my arm, it was twilight, and the starless skies threatened rain. Road and field and forest were foggy and silent; and I thought of the first time I had ever set eyes on Lois, in the late afternoon stillness which ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... their destruction. The stranger's bark gradually distanced them—they saw it enter among the whirling eddies—he missed the sound of their measured strokes, glanced back, lost the balance of his oars, his boat upset, and Hal saw neither no more. There, on that moonless, starless night, when the darkness was blackest, just before the dawn, the brave fireman had gone down in that whistling, groaning, shrieking, moaning, Tartarean whirlpool! Mute horror stood on every face. Hal's grasp slackened; the lawyer quickly seized the oars, and turned the ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... starless, and the wind blew raw and bleak as the baronet dashed down the avenue and out into the high-road. He almost wondered at himself for complying with the dying woman's desire, but some inward impulse beyond his ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... States. We desired to explain and explode two erroneous ideas,—the curse of Canaan, and the theory that the Negro is a distinct species,—that were educated into our white countrymen during the long and starless night of the bondage of the Negro. It must appear patent to every honest student of God's word, that the slavery interpretation of the curse of Canaan is without warrant of Scripture, and at war with the broad and catholic ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... a moment. After the starless darkness and the icy night air, and the fierce silent two hours' race, his senses reeled on sudden entrance into warmth, and light, and the cheery hum of voices. A sudden unforeseen anguish assailed him, as now first he entertained the possibility of being overmatched by her wiles and her daring, ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... is lost in the darkness of night, For the moon is swept from the starless heaven, And the latest line of lowering light That lingered on the stormy even, A dim-seen line, half cloud, half wave, Hath sunk into the weltering grave. Castle-Oban is dark without and within, And downwards to the fearful din, Where Ocean with his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... that he loved was the Third Symphony in E Flat, with its epic opening; the mournful beauty of its funeral march, now sad, calm, solemn like a moonless, starless night, now shining with gleams of hope and faith; its crisp and lively scherzo; and the triumphant finale, a veritable ecstasy of divine joy. My son as an historical scholar found a peculiar attraction ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... sky begins to darken. At the opening of the Second Act we see him with Fleance crossing the court of the castle on his way to bed. The blackness of the moonless, starless night seems to oppress him. And he is ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... melting of the ice about her heart, the loosening of the fetters of her tongue, the quickening of her nature, the miracle vouchsafed? Of none, now, for a reason! Saxham told himself, in those hours when he propped his burning forehead on his hands and looked into the starless night of his desolate soul, that he had ceased even to desire that she should come to love him. Far better ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the sun was blotted out completely, and it was as dark as a starless midnight. A screaming sound filled the boy's ears: the yelling of the storm, the laughter of the furies, the shrill shouts of fiends. He had to shield his mouth in order to breathe, and even then a fine dust ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... bane, Perchance a blessing; or in glittering crowds, Gazing all rapt on woman's eloquent face, Nature's most witching and most treacherous page; Or high in mirth with those whose senseful wit Outflashed the rosy wines that warmed its flow, I've held my vigils till the brow of Night Grew pale and starless, and her solemn pomp, Out-glared by day, faded in hueless space. I do repent me of my worship. Night Was given for rest: who breaks this natural law Wrongs body and soul alike. One vigorous hour Of sober day-light thought is worth a night's Slow oscitations ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... discharge their souls, And give them furloughs for another world; But we, like sentries, are obliged to stand In starless nights, and ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the terrace, where the summer night was so soft that she scarce needed the light shawl she had picked up. Several of the long windows of the occupied rooms stood open to it, and the light came out in vague shafts and fell upon the old smooth stones. The hour was moonless and starless and the air heavy and still—which was why, in her evening dress, she need fear no chill and could get away, in the outer darkness, from that provocation of opportunity which had assaulted her, within, on her sofa, as a beast might ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... and hide-defended ship they set out, reached a sunless, starless land, without fuel; ate raw food and suffered. At last, after many days, a fire was seen ashore. Thorkill, setting a jewel at the mast-head to be able to regain his vessel easily, rows ashore ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... blank an eye! 30 And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars, That give away their motion to the stars; Those stars, that glide behind them or between, Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen: Yon crescent Moon, as fixed as if it grew 35 In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue; I see them all so excellently fair, I see, not feel, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... slow and watchful flight, His neck is bare, his eyes are bright, His plumage fits the starless night. ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... lantern light And he was linen-pale with fright; It was not hard to guess my task, Although I raised the sash to ask— 'Oh, Father,' cried the boy, 'Oh, come! Quickly with the viaticum! The sailor-man is going to die!' The thirsty silence drank his cry. A starless stillness damped the air, While his shrill voice kept piping there, 'The sailor-man is going to die'— The huge ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... pity enough in heaven or earth, There is not love enough, if children die Like famished birds—oh, less mercifully. A great wrong's done when such as these go forth Into the starless dark, broken and bruised, With mind and sweet affection all confused, And horror closing round them as they go. There ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... his appearance, the chains dropped one by one, the heavy gate turned on its hinges, and Lucien was the first to spring out into the open road. The sky was starless, the morning dew chilled our blood, and we felt that uncomfortable feeling which, in the tropics, affects the traveller just at the period when night gives place to day. I led Lucien by the hand, lest, in the dim light, he might fall. He shivered with cold, ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... starless, with a darkness so enveloping that it seems to possess palpability. As we reel westward in a smother of water the miracle of how any human being equipped with but five senses can find and keep his course in the chartless void that envelops us ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various
... the vanquish'd Flood Bespeaks in haste the great earth-rending god: Father of storms! behold this mortal race Confound my force and brave me to my face. Not all my waves by all my tempests driven, Nor black night brooding o'er the starless heaven, Can check their course; they toss and plunge amain, And lo, my guardian rocks project ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... night. There had been a representation of Verdi's 'Forza del Destino' at the Teatro Malibran. After midnight we walked homeward through the Merceria, crossed the Piazza, and dived into the narrow calle which leads to the traghetto of the Salute. It was a warm moist starless night, and there seemed no air to breathe in those narrow alleys. The gondolier was half asleep. Eustace called him as we jumped into his boat, and rang our soldi on the gunwale. Then he arose and turned the ferro round, and stood across towards the Salute. Silently, insensibly, from ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... The night in starless gloom descends, Nor can the pale moonshine Break through the clouds whose veil extends In boundless form, and darkly ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... and naturally to be other than that of a man in a sound sleep. She crept back to her room reassured, and stood in the window watching the moon set through the trees of the park. The sky was misty and starless, and after the moon went down the night was black as pitch. She knew the time had come, and stole along the passage, past her husband's door—where she stopped again to listen to his breathing—to the top of the stairs. ...
— Kerfol - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... religion, or at least of religiosity, as our Friend has since exhibited himself, he hides not that, in those days, he was wholly irreligious: 'Doubt had darkened into Unbelief,' says he; 'shade after shade goes grimly over your soul, till you have the fixed, starless, Tartarean black.' To such readers as have reflected, what can be called reflecting, on man's life, and happily discovered, in contradiction to much Profit-and-loss Philosophy, speculative and practical, that Soul is not synonymous with Stomach; who understand, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... in Egypt in the time of Israel was darker than those years immediately following the Negro's emancipation. And what must have been our condition to-day had not those pillars of light been placed in our starless sky? But what is more, for thirty years the same spirit and the same people who first made these colleges possible among us, have continued their aid, and still make them ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... now high time to break off the conversation, interesting as it might be, and to think of our departure: for the afternoon was fast wearing away, and a starless, if not a tempestuous, night threatened to succeed. Charles Rohfritsch was despatched to the inn below—to order the horses, settle the reckoning, and to bring the carriage as near to the monastery as possible. Meanwhile Mr. L. and myself descended with M. Hartenschneider to his own ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... blown from out our course, through might of seas we drive, 200 Nor e'en might Palinurus self the day from night-tide sift, Nor have a deeming of the road atwixt the watery drift. Still on for three uncertain suns, that blind mists overlay, And e'en so many starless nights, across the sea we stray; But on the fourth day at the last afar upon us broke The mountains of another land, mid curling wreaths of smoke. Then fall the sails, we rise on oars, no sloth hath any place, ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... elapsed before she heard a knock. Mr. Baines had had to arouse his clerk from sleep. Instead of going down to the front-door, Mary threw up the bedroom window and looked out. It was a mild but starless night. Trafalgar Road was silent save for the steam-car, which, with its load of revellers returning from Hanbridge—that centre of gaiety—slipped rumbling down ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... the many stairs with cat-like stealth, and like cats crept out upon the grimy leads. But to-night they were no blacker than their canopy of sky; not a chimney-stack stood out against the starless night; one had to feel one's way in order to avoid tripping over the low parapets of the L-shaped wells that ran from roof to basement to light the inner rooms. One of these wells was spanned by a flimsy bridge with iron handrails that felt warm to the touch ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... of night was scattered, Sight returned unto mine eyes. So, when haply rainy Caurus Rolls the storm-clouds through the skies, Hidden is the sun; all heaven Is obscured in starless night. But if, in wild onset sweeping, Boreas frees day's prisoned light, All suddenly the radiant god outstreams, And strikes our ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... storm is at it's height—how the wind howls, Like an unearthly voice, through these lone chambers! And the rain patters on the flapping casement Which quivers in it's frame—the night is starless— Yet cheerly Werner! still our hearts are warm: The tempest is without, or should be so— For we are sheltered here where Fortune's clouds May roll all harmless o'er us as the wrath Of these wild elements that menace now, Yet ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... month of February, and in the terrible winter of 1719. The trees were powdered with hoar frost, and it was at this time impossible to glide quietly along in the little boat, for the lake was covered with ice. And yet, in this biting cold, in this dark, starless night, a cavalier ventured alone into the open country, and along a cross-road which led to Clisson. He threw the reins on the neck of his horse, which proceeded at ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... His life has capitulated to the Spirit that denies, and the unbelief is as bitter as it is hopeless. "Doubt had darkened into Unbelief; shade after shade goes grimly over your soul, till you have the fixed, starless, Tartarean black." "Is there no God, then; but at best an absentee God, sitting idle, ever since the first Sabbath, at the outside of his Universe, and seeing it go? Has the ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... put his hand on mine, with a glad countenance, wherefrom I took courage, he brought me within the secret things. Here sighs, laments, and deep wailings were resounding though the starless air; wherefore at first I wept thereat. Strange tongues, horrible cries, words of woe, accents of anger, voices high and hoarse, and sounds of hands with them, were making a tumult which whirls forever in that air dark without change, like the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... saw him, last week, at two balls and a party,— For a prince, his demeanour was rather too hearty. You know, we are used to quite different graces, * * * * * The Czar's look, I own, was much brighter and brisker, But then he is sadly deficient in whisker; And wore but a starless blue coat, and in kersey- mere breeches whisk'd round in a waltz with the J * *, Who, lovely as ever, seem'd just as delighted With majesty's presence as those ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... and well defined. For a few paces he followed it, then slipped and rolled back as the fatal paralysis deadened all power of movement in his limbs. He lay where he fell, moaning out his grief with his wide-staring eyes turned straight up into the cold gray of the starless sky. ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... of a leeward shore" they were doomed to experience during a moonless and starless night. They reduced their sails to a few yards of canvass, and lowered their yards on deck. The waves, that rolled the vessel with irresistible force, threatened to swallow them up; a tremendous sea carried away the boat ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... mistook it for her destiny or not, she seems to have acquiesced when Charlotte showed her the veiled figure at the cross-roads, to have been led blindfold by Charlotte through the "streaming and starless darkness" that took them to Brussels. The rest she endured with a stern and terrible resignation. It is known from her letters what the Pensionnat was to Charlotte. Heaven only knows what it must have been to Emily. Charlotte, with ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... well In the dark starless night I lay; And dropping water like a bell, Like a bell ringing far away, Struck liquid notes in monotone,— An echo of a distant bell Tolling the knell of yesterday. Deep down beneath the mossy ground The ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... fades down the deep (As dream to unknown dream in sleep); Shaken translucency illumes The hyaline of drifting glooms; The strange soft-handed depth subdues Drowned colour there, but black to hues, As death to living, decomposes — Red darkness of the heart of roses, Blue brilliant from dead starless skies, And gold that lies behind the eyes, The unknown unnameable sightless white That is the essential flame of night, Lustreless purple, hooded green, The myriad hues that lie between Darkness and darkness! . ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... the open air on a night more black than any known night had been before. One's voice lost itself in there without resonance, as if on a plain; the smoke of our blaze drove aslant, scintillating with red sparks, and went trailing afar, as if under the clouds of a starless sky. Ultimately, it must have escaped through some imperceptible crevices in the roof of rock. In one place, only, the light of the fire illuminated a small part of the rugged wall, where the shadows of our bodies would surge up, repeating our movements, ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... the house, her face buried in her hands, felt, too, something of this exultation; but she nerved herself to look into the future, and saw it grim and starless. She saw herself the daughter of the convicted thief, the thief who had only narrowly escaped having to stand his trial for murdering her lover; the thief who had shifted the burden of his guilt on ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... which like a silver clasp unites to-day with yesterday; when morning and evening sit together hand in hand beneath the starless sky of midnight. ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... when Tom returned to the first line he was put on sentry duty. It was one of those silent, windless, starless nights, when under ordinary circumstances a solemn hush prevails. Even the trenches were silent that night. On both sides the guns had ceased booming; it seemed as though a truce had been agreed upon, and yet the air was ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... left me, his fancied bride, to that last meeting, when, at a word, and ere I knew what I had said, he turned on me that cold and careless eye, and left me, haughtily and forever? And now—(reading)—misapprehension, has it been! Is the sun on high again?—in this black and starless night—the noonday sun? He loves me still.—Oh! this ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... on the coast of Mexico in due time. Nothing of special interest occurred at Acapulco—only some of the Mexican ladies are very beautiful. They all have brilliant black hair—hair "black as starless night"—if I may quote from the "Family Herald". It don't curl.—A Mexican lady's hair never curls—it is straight as an Indian's. Some people's hair won't curl under any circumstances.—My hair won't curl under two shillings. (Artemus always wore his hair ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne
... twilight of Italy had passed, and it was now completely night, dark and starless, which made more startling the sudden appearance of several blazing torches, borne by masked and hooded figures attired in black, who struck loud and repeated blows on the gates of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... hence to Cuba is not merely to pass over a few degrees of latitude,—it is to take a step from the nineteenth century back into the dark ages. In the clime of sunshine and endless summer, we are in the land of starless political darkness. Lying under the lee of a land where every man is a sovereign is a realm where the lives, liberties, and fortunes of all are held at the will of a single individual, who acknowledges fealty only ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... the Countess Louis heard Young light sing in the lark. Ere eve it was that other bird, Which brings the starless dark. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the terrace, under Mrs. Verver's perceptive pursuit. The relation, to-day, had turned itself round; Charlotte was seeing her come, through patches of lingering noon, quite as she had watched Charlotte menace her through the starless dark; and there was a moment, that of her waiting a little as they thus met across the distance, when the interval was bridged by a recognition not less soundless, and to all appearance not less charged with strange ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... a starless night the men, in Indian file, like a party of Iroquois braves upon the war trail, stole up the winding and ill-defined path which led to the summit. Woodgate, the Lancashire Brigadier, and Blomfield of the Fusiliers led the way. It was a severe ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... vainly for some minutes to find the door, and bruising her hands against the wall and oaken chair, she at last found it and thrust it open, the night without was moonless and starless and stormy, and in its unillumined blackness she saw no trace of the little girl. She went out on to the doorstep and listened, but there was no sound. The wind was high; the perfume of the stocks and wallflowers was strong; far away the sound of the river rushing through ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... the giants were on their feet again, standing ankle deep, far out in the river. Up against the unbroken blackness of the starless sky their huge forms towered. For a second they stood motionless; then they came together again and Aura could see the Very Young Man sink on his knees, his hand trailing in the water. Then in an instant more he struggled up to his feet; and as his hand ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... how sound you sleep! Though your mother's care is deep, You can lie with heart at rest In the narrow brass-bound chest; In the starless night and drear You can sleep, and never hear Billows breaking, and the cry Of the night-wind wandering by; In soft purple mantle sleeping With your little face on mine, Hearing not your mother weeping And the ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... was at first merely a starless selvedge to the starry dome. No rosy flush, no creeping pallor, announced the commencing day. Only the Corona, the Zodiacal light, a huge cone-shaped, luminous haze, pointing up towards the splendour of the morning star, warned us of the ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... arched black and solitary. Even the small silent birds that had swayed dejectedly to and fro on the branches all day had flown off into the darkness. Presently, the light in the window went out, and as the hours wore on, a fine drizzling rain began to fall, as soft as tears, from the starless sky over the mulberry tree. A sense of isolation greater than any she had ever known attacked her like a physical chill, and rising, she went over to the fire and stirred the pile of coal into a flame. She was alone in her despair, and she realized, with a feeling ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... cottage in Havre a young man was walking up and down in feverish uneasiness. From time to time he looked through the window which opened on to the sea. The waves ran high, the wind whistled, while dark clouds rolled over the starless sky. ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... if in that starless deep, I lose your eyes, I'll haunt familiar places. I'll not keep Tryst in the skies. I'll haunt the whispering elms that found us true, The old grass-grown lane. Look for me there, lest I should look for you, And look ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... on, and Wilhelmine woke with a start as a more than usually violent jolt flung her against the door. She peered out into the darkness but could see nothing, for the night was absolutely starless. The road was so steep that at moments the heavy carriage threatened to run backwards down the hill, in spite of the straining of the wretched horses that struggled onwards, slipping and floundering on the dripping road. At the top of the hill ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... forgotten atom of life, a spark of soul, emitted inadvertent from the great creative source, and now burning unmarked to waste in the heart of a black hollow. She asked, was she thus to burn out and perish, her living light doing no good, never seen, never needed—a star in an else starless firmament, which nor shepherd, nor wanderer, nor sage, nor priest tracked as a guide or read as a prophecy? Could this be, she demanded, when the flame of her intelligence burned so vivid; when her life beat so ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... a change came over her indeed. She had left all on earth in the thick darkness of a starless spring night, yet all around her was lighted up like a mellow harvest eve, when the sun shines refulgent through masses of golden clouds on the smiling pastures and emerald meadows of the west. She looked up, but she could see ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... bosom the moon sailed as in a mirror; on it great ships floated at anchor and islets nestled down; all round the sheltering hills verily clapped their hands. In the great dome of the universe there was not a cloud. Through the starless windows of that glorious dome they could see into the fathomless depths of Eternity. Under the magic of the moon not even the sordid work of man struck a discordant note. At their feet the faint ripplings of this crystal ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... dropping from their pods, The hawthorn apples bright as dawn, And the pale mullen's starless rods, Were just as now a year agone. But changed is every thing to me, From the small flower to sunset's glow, Since last I sat beneath this tree, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... he had heard, Martin Pinzon, as his own. The room was very hot. The August night outside was hot too and sultry and starless. The girl's father was resting now, breathing unevenly. The girl's name was Nina. One of the small caravels in her father's three-ship fleet was named after her. Her full name was ...
— My Shipmate—Columbus • Stephen Wilder
... blow cleft Metea's skull in sunder, and his blood fell on her neck. It was the young Indian who advised her liberation in the morning who dealt Metea's death-blow. Taking Alice in his arms, he stepped lightly from the hut. It was a still and starless night, and the sleeping Indians saw them not. Unloosing a canoe, he placed Alice in it, and pushed ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... hail, indeed, but scarcely within sight, for the space where the countess sate commanded little more than protruding crags and stunted trees, and mountains lifting their dark, bare brows to the starless sky. ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... dark and starless night. Tattoo-beat had long been heard, and Hay's Brigade, weary after a long day's march, rested beneath the dewy boughs of gigantic oaks in a dense forest near the placid Rappahannock. No sound broke the stillness of the night. The troops were lying on nature's ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... obvious that these have no connection whatever with the nebula, being, in fact, only a simple continuation over it of the general ground of the Galaxy. The conclusion can hardly be avoided that, in looking at it, we see through and beyond the Milky Way, far out into space, through a starless region, disconnecting it altogether from our system. It is not easy for language to convey a full impression of the beauty and sublimity of the spectacle which this nebula offers as it enters the field of view of a telescope, fixed ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... to smile back at her. Then he went out of the castle into a starless night that was as quiet as an unvoiced menace. A small and hard and gnarled-looking moon ruled over the dusk's secrecy. The moon this night, afloat in a luminous gray void, somehow reminded Florian of a glistening and ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... dream had been sweet indeed; but, ah! how bitter was the awakening. Her castles in the air had all melted into clouds, and here in the very flower of her youth she felt that her life was ruined, and she was as one wandering in a sterile waste, with a black and starless sky overhead. She clasped her hands with a sensation of pain, and a rose at her breast fell down withered and dead. She took it up with listless fingers, and with the quiver of her hand the leaves fell off and were scattered over her white dress in a pink shower. It was an allegory ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... He carried me back to my dungeon, laid me tenderly on the bed, gave me some medicine, and asked me if there was any thing more he could do. Then he went away, and I was left with my own thoughts—starless as ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... his arm about her shoulder, and led her gently on to the verandah. The night had fallen dark and starless. Through the black veil they saw the gleam of bivouac fires and heard the voices of men calling to one another, and the clatter of piled arms. They remained silent, after the storm and stress of the past, content to be together and at peace. They knew that the long night was over and ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... How like the starless night of death Our being's brief eclipse, When faltering heart and failing breath Have bleached ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... have already closed their wooden sliding doors for the night, so that the streets are dark, and the lanterns of our landlord indispensable; for there is no moon, and the night is starless. We walk along the main street for a distance of about six squares, and then, making a tum, find ourselves before a superb bronze torii, the gateway to the great ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... learns they are about to descend into Hades. Having visited this place before, Virgil boldly leads Dante through this portal into an ante-hell region, where sighs, lamentations, and groans pulse through the starless air. Shuddering with horror, Dante inquires what it all means, only to be told that the souls "who lived without praise or blame," as well as the angels who remained neutral during the war in heaven, are confined in this place, since Paradise, ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... rain along the smoking trail; twilight by day, depthless darkness by night, where we lay panting in starless obscurity, listening to the giant winds of the wilderness—vast, resistless, illimitable winds flowing steadily through the unseen and naked crests of forests, colder and ever colder they blew, heralding the trampling blasts of winter, charging us ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... heart, he throws the whole at once out of the social circle with its multiform restraints. As in "Hamlet" the stage on which the whole is acted is really the heart of Hamlet, so he makes his visible stage as it were, slope off into the misty infinite, with a grey, starless heaven overhead, and Hades open beneath his feet. Hence young people brought up in the country understand the tragedies far sooner than they can comprehend the comedies. It needs acquaintance with society and social ways to clear ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... with the hypothesis that nebulae are remote galaxies? If there were but one nebula, it would be a curious coincidence were this one nebula so placed in the distant regions of space, as to agree in direction with a starless spot in our own sidereal system. If there were but two nebulae, and both were so placed, the coincidence would be excessively strange. What, then, shall we say on finding that there are thousands of nebulae so placed? Shall we believe that in thousands of cases these far-removed galaxies ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... silver skewers; wonderful phosphorescence played about beneath us like wraiths of drowned men luring one to destruction; while in the musical lap of the water against the ship's side one almost fancied the sound of Lorelei's singing. And then there were starless nights with only a red moon to shine through cloudy skies; and nights no less beautiful when all the world seemed shrouded in black velvet, when the dusky sea parted silently to let the boat pass through, and then closed behind it with no laugh or ripple of water to speed it onward, ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... not care to go out into the starless night. Perhaps there are those who wait for you, eh? With ...
— Bride of the Dark One • Florence Verbell Brown
... sky. It was not the sky of the City, distant, and marbled with streaks of smoke. It was close and clear; starless, too; and no moon hung upon it. Yet though it was night there was light ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... absolutely necessary for the saving of our moral health that we should turn away from the dreary flippancy of an effete society to such scenes as those. If we regarded only the pampered classes, then we might well think that true human fellowship had perished, and a starless darkness—worse almost than Atheism—would fall on the soul. But we are not all corrupt, and the strong brave heart of our people still beats true. Young men cherish manly affection for friends, and are not ashamed to show it; sweet girls form friendships that hold ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... stationed in the town, and sentinels kept a very careful watch. On the Sabbath, as the people were returning from public worship, one or two Indians were seen on the neighboring hills, which led the people to suspect that an assault was contemplated. The night was moonless, starless, and of Egyptian darkness. The Indians, perfectly acquainted with the location of every building and every inch of the ground, crept noiselessly, three hundred in number, each to his appointed post. They spread themselves over all parts of the town, skulking behind every fence, and rock, ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... foaming torrent. Nor did night Acknowledge Phoebus' rise, for all the sky Felt her dominion and obscured its face, And darkness joined with darkness. Thus doth lie The lowest earth beneath the snowy zone And never-ending winters, where the sky Is starless ever, and no growth of herb Sprouts from the frozen earth; but standing ice Tempers (7) the stars which in the middle zone Kindle their flames. Thus, Father of the world, And thou, trident-god who rul'st the sea Second in place, Neptunus, load the air With clouds ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... shown him into the room the window was wide open to the hot, starless night, but the landlord, though he had left the window open, had drawn the thick curtains across it. That was all right; Chester had no wish to be wakened at five in the morning by the sunlight streaming into the room. He meant to have a really long rest. He was too tired to ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... the ocean one cold starless night, A small bark was sailing in pitiful plight: The boom of the billows, as on rushed the storm, O'ercame the stout hearts of ...
— Favourite Welsh Hymns - Translated into English • Joseph Morris
... dramatists act firmly on the view that their duty is to write plays interesting when rendered by a good, starless company, they will only produce as a rule bravura pieces of little artistic value. By all means let them write strongly emotional parts, if they can; but they are not worthy of their royalties if their characters do not generally lie ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... wakened suddenly. Outside, a black starless sky bent over a cool, quiet earth. A thick darkness hid all the world. Dead stillness everywhere. And yet, I listened for a voice to speak again that I was sure I had heard as I wakened. I waited only a moment. A quick rapping under my window, and a low eager call came to my ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... to life from out the tomb; Death's bands thus swiftly rent, Life's tidal force Undammed, had rushed with too impetuous vent, Did not a tortuous cave arrest its course, Ere he at length emerged beneath night's starless gloom. ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... love, express it so completely, once and for all... And she—who could say that she, knowing what he had done, might not, illogically, come to love him? Perhaps she would devote her life to mourning him. He saw her bending over his tomb, in beautiful humble curves, under a starless sky, watering the violets ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... passed on, and the night before the wedding hung its cold, starless gloom over the Queen City-hung as the sable pall above ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... alone—alone, and thinking, brooding, dreaming. We might have been statues, we sat so motionless and still. It was a wild night, for winter was come again for a moment, after the habit of this region in the early spring. The sky was starless and black, and a strong wind was blowing from the lake. The silence in the room was so deep that all outside sounds seemed exaggerated by contrast with it. These sounds were fitting ones: they harmonised with the situation and the conditions: the boom and thunder of sudden storm-gusts ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... beats quick, my breath heaves short, My limbs deny their slight support; Cold dews my pallid face o'erspread, With deadly languor droops my head, My ears with tingling echoes ring, And Life itself is on the wing; My eyes refuse the cheering light, Their orbs are veil'd in starless night: Such pangs my nature sinks beneath, And ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... love should be a blight and snare To those who seek all sympathies in one!— Such once I sought in vain; then black despair, The shadow of a starless night, was thrown Over the world in which I moved alone:— 50 Yet never found I one not false to me, Hard hearts, and cold, like weights of icy stone Which crushed and withered mine, that could not be Aught but a lifeless clod, until ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley |
