"Dank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were shouting messages, making strange, eager gestures. And Alvina sat quite still, wonderingly. And so the big, heavy train drew out, leaving the others small and dim on the platform. It was foggy, the river was a sea of yellow beneath the ponderous iron bridge. The morning was dim and dank. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... dank on me, Sigrun of Sevafell, This is thy doing, O sun-fraught lady, Golden woman, the tears thou sheddest Upon thy bed stay not beside thee; Like blood they fall, cold and deathly, Like sobs they stab me ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... her hand and stared out of the window. The garden was dank and deserted, the country beyond showed no sign of habitation; the wind moaned among the ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... as tall as most children of ten, immensely fat, with pendulous red cheeks that in spite of cold cream and soft water always looked as though they had just been rubbed with a grater. Her hair, long and fair, was dank, hanging in two emaciated pig-tails nearly to her waist, and her nails—another ineradicable trick—bitten to the deepest ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... remembered save here and there by some sad face unnoticed in the crowd. Four of the men were dead; one, a Frenchman was still alive, though bleeding copiously from a deep wound in the chest that with a handful of dank grass he was trying ...
— The Love of Ulrich Nebendahl • Jerome K. Jerome
... Cotswold manor. Being a one-storied building it occupied a large superficial area, and its tumbling irregular roofs of freestone, the outlines of which were blurred by the encroaching mist of vegetation that overhung them, gave the effect of water, as if the atmosphere of this dank valley had wrought upon the substance of the building and as if the architects themselves had been confused by the rivalry of the trees by which it was surrounded. The owners of Rushbrooke Grange had never occupied a prominent position in the county, and their estates had grown smaller ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... lightsome earth, the balmy atmosphere, and basking nature become dark, cold and ungenial, when the sleeping wind has awoke in the east? Or, when the dun clouds thickly veil the sky, while exhaustless stores of rain are poured down, until, the dank earth refusing to imbibe the superabundant moisture, it lies in pools on the surface; when the torch of day seems like a meteor, to be quenched; who has not seen the cloud-stirring north arise, ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... Blakeney Sea pansies, sedge, and rosemary; Frail fronds thrust forth in dim dank air, A message from those lying there: ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... anxious eyes, she smiled again. "Yes, he made it," she said, wondering if Ed were the other outlaw that the papers had said had escaped. She walked briskly to the end of the room and returned with a dampened towel and wiped the dank sweat from Pete's forehead. He stared up at her, his face white and expressionless. "It was the coat—my hand caught," ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... is earth-hued like the runlet Whereon he swims; and how in me should lurk Thoughts apt to neighbour thine, thou creature sunlit? If through long fret and irk Thine eyes within their browed recesses were Worn caves where thought lay couchant in its lair; Wert thou a spark among dank leaves, ah ruth! With age in all thy veins, while all thy heart was youth; Our contact might run smooth. But life's Eoan dews still moist thy ringed hair; Dian's chill finger-tips Thaw if at night they happen on thy lips; The flying fringes of the sun's cloak frush The fragile ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... fancied would lead me to the love for which my soul is starving—to the sympathy which is sweeter even than love to the broken heart of a man. I followed it. I was deceived. It was no real light, but a mere will o' the wisp bred in the dank tarn of despair." ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... movement, no outcry. Even Stone himself was led to a half-remorseful wonder whether he had been deceived concerning the fellow's state. Then, after a few seconds, the bald head rose, glistening from the pool of the "beer." The thin wisps of gray hair hung in dank strings; the jungle of beard seemed strangely thin; there was something curiously unlike Ben York in the lineaments. The marshal guessed that the metamorphosis was wrought by the swirling mess, which had scrubbed the weazened face almost clean for the first time in the memory of living ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... gents of dismal mien, And dank and greasy rags. Came out of a shop for gin, Swaggering over ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... months before, at Abbazia, when they had come up from sea-bathing in the Adriatic. He had leaned down over her, to help her up the Angiolina bath steps, wet and slippery with sea-water. The mingled gold and chestnut of her thick hair was dank and sodden with brine, the wistful face that she turned up to him was pinched and colorless and blue about the lips. She seemed, of a sudden, as she leaned heavily on his arm, a presaging apparition out of the ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... corner. At the same end an archway led to inner recesses. Behind the skin doorway sounded heavy breathing, as of sleepers. I had promised not to spy. Turning, I retraced the way to the outer door. Here another pelt swayed heavily in the wind. Dank, earthy smells of spring, odours of leaves water-soaked by melting snows, the faint perfume of flowers pushing up through mats of verdure, blew in on ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... mild state of stupefaction turned away. Clat-clat! sang the little wooden shoes. A plaintive gonk rose as she prodded a laggard from the dank gutter. A piece of gold! Clat-clat! Clat-clat! Surely this had been a day of marvels; two crowns from the grand duke and a piece of gold from this old man in peasant clothes. Instinctively she knew that he was not a peasant. But what could he be? Comparison would have made him a king. She was too ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... brows, though the morning was yet too dark for the curate to perceive more than the outline of his features. Milestone after milestone glided by the wheels, and neither of the travellers broke the silence. It was a cold, raw morning, and the mists rose sullenly from the dank hedges and ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... shrivel ups like a fat angle-worm on a sea-coal fire. He's a modern Balaam, peddling God's blessings and curses—for the long green. He imagines that an eager multitude sit up every night to catch the first dank copy of his little matutinal mistake—to see what he's got to SAY. He's garrulous as a toothless gran dam at a sewing circle, as busy as a canine eunuch when his kind do congregate. He discourses of everything, from the creation of the universe to Farmer Brown's ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... another, of all the pleasures that he had chosen except smoking (and the days of that I know in my heart ought to be over), I forgot eating, which I still enjoy, and who sees the circle of impotence closing very slowly but quite steadily around him? In my view, one dank, dispirited word is harmful, a crime of LESE- HUMANITE, a piece of acquired evil; every gay, every bright word or picture, like every pleasant air of music, is a piece of pleasure set afloat; the reader catches ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and the heavy breath, And the silent motions of passing death, And the smell, cold, oppressive, and dank, Sent through the pores ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... digression. I merely made use of the cockroach simile because it occurred to me as I traversed the Italian quarter and gazed upon its denizens, an occasional accidental rub against one of whom made me shudder. Innocent they may be, but they don't look it, and when I was taken up a court—a horrible, dark, dank cul-de-sac—and shown the identical spot which a few weeks beforehand had been the scene of a murder, I made a sketch in the quickest time on record, keeping one eye on the ghastly place and the other on a window where a ragged blind was pulled quickly and ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... south. Nothing can efface from my mind the picture of it as I saw it when first going to the Caucasus. The sunset illumined it with the hues of romance. All the multiplicity of its dingy buildings shone as if lit up from within, and their dank and mouldy greens and blues and yellows became burning living colours. The town lay spread out upon the high banks of the Don and every segment of it was crowned with a church. The gilt domes blazed in the sunlight and the crosses above them were changed into pure fire. Round about ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... meat they brought with them. if I cannot procure a sufficient quantity of Elk's skins I shall substitute those of the buffaloe. late in the evening the party arrived with two more canoes and another portion of the baggage. Whitehouse one of them much heated and fortiegued on his arrivall dank a very hearty draught of water and was taken almost instanly extreemly ill. his pulse were very full and I therefore bled him plentifully from which he felt great relief. I had no other instrument with ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... bare walls of her own ancestral home, the ghostly hand of memory had conjured up pictures of long ago:—her own, her husband's and her brother's arrest here in this very room, the weeping servants, the rough, half-naked soldiery—then the agony of a nine days' imprisonment in a dark, dank prison-cell filled to overflowing with poor wretches in the same pitiable plight as herself—the hasty trial, the insults, the mockery:—her husband's death in prison and her own thoughts of ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... to the gate and stooped down. I lifted the heavy head, put the long dank hair aside, and turned the face. And it was my mother, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... cry again, again, again! To Heliodore! And mingle the sweet word ye call in vain With that ye pour! And bring to me her wreath of yesterday That's dank with myrrh; Hesternae Rosae, ah my friends, but they Remember her! Lo the kind roses, loved of lovers, weep As who repine, For if on any breast they see her ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang
... He preserve them, and I not have the power To snatch the loveliest of earth's daughters from A doom which even some serpent, with his mate, Shall 'scape to save his kind to be prolonged, To hiss and sting through some emerging world, 40 Reeking and dank from out the slime, whose ooze Shall slumber o'er the wreck of this, until The salt morass subside into a sphere Beneath the sun, and be the monument, The sole and undistinguished sepulchre, Of yet quick ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... as brave as a bull-dog, thrust his horse into the path, while the Abbot sat shivering outside. "Certain nobles of higher rank," says Peter de Blois, "followed his example, not wishing to rust their armor, or tear their fine clothes, in the dank copse." ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... horse on the loneliness of the marsh land, and looked up at the low clouds about her, at the creeping mist, the dank grass. It seemed a place in which a newly-released soul might wander because it did not yet know ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... seen by all. Oft through his groves, With folded arms and downcast looks he saunters, Ev'n 'midst the dank inclemency ...
— The Female Gamester • Gorges Edmond Howard
... gone, amme om, amme am. The mother asked some one, "Do you hear?" and the child looked at her and took hold of her own ears. To the question, "How do we eat?" she makes the motion of eating. She says nein when she means to refuse. "Dank" (thank) is pronounced dakkn. "Bitte" (I beg, or please) is correctly pronounced. She understands the meaning of spoon, dress, mirror, mouth, plate, drink, and many other words, and likes to hear stories, especially when they contain the words ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... serenade the lost man. Sometimes their prolonged notes sounded like the wail of a deserted babe, sometimes like mocking laughter, and again like a deep guttural snore. Nothing worse than mosquitos, dismal sounds, and the dank vapor of the swamp afflicted the weary man, who, falling asleep at midnight, slept so soundly that on waking late next morning he reproached himself for not having dreamed as usual of ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... on them, denser and denser; the chill mists rose from the stream and enshrouded everything in a dank, noisome fog. ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... appointed place of embarkation, went on board the Fairy, accompanied by the Mayor and other officials, and sailed along the quays round the mouth of the Mersey, surveying the grand mass of shipping from the pavilion on deck as well as the dank mist would permit. On landing, the Town Hall and St. George's Hall were visited in succession. In the first the Queen received an address and knighted the Mayor. She admired both buildings—particularly St. George's, which she called "worthy of ancient Athens," and said ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... very courageous. As we sped along the ridge in the afternoon I seemed to myself like a midge lost in a monstrous net. The dank, dripping trees and the misty hills seemed to muffle and deaden the world. I could not believe that they ever would end; that anywhere there was a clear sky and open country. And I had always the feeling that in ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... "When you are near me I have feelings similar to those produced by dank warehouses, gloomy crypts, and deep mines. And as sailors feel the loom of the land on dark nights, so I think I feel the loom of your body. But it is all very vague ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... we go back, but now let us cross the "Creek." It is a creek only by courtesy or an Americanism, at the present day; but when those miles of fertile fields upon the north were unreclaimed, the dank herbage hindered evaporation, and Easton's Pond was fed by unfailing streams. Then the vast body of overflowing water swept a deep channel, which the sea, rolling far up towards the pond, widened and made permanent. Boats came from ships in the offing, and followed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... der Stille der Nacht denket an euch mein Lied, Wo mein ewiger Gram jeglichen Stundenschlag, Welcher naeher mich bringt dem Trauten Grabe, mit Dank begruesst.[56] ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... Nightly she wandered the woods, searching for charms voodooistic— Scorpions, lizards, and herbs, dormice, chameleons and plantains! Serpents and caw-caws and bats, screech-owls and crickets and adders— These were the guides of the witch through the dank deeps of the forest. Then, with her roots and her herbs, back to her cave in the morning Ambled that hussy to brew spells of unspeakable evil; And, when the people awoke, seeing the hillside and valley Sweltered ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... the doctor's house stood Pierre, in dress coat and white cravat, throwing open the door as each carriage rolled up. Puffs of dank air rushed in; the afternoon was rainy, and a yellow light illumined the narrow hall, with its curtained doorways and array of green plants. It was only two o'clock, but the evening seemed as near at hand as on ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... this thrilling tale, Philo Gubb had not guessed the fiendishness of malefactors when brought to bay, and yet here it was in black and white. The oubliette—a dark, dank dungeon hidden beneath the ground—was a favorite method of killing detectives, it seemed. Generally speaking, the oubliette seemed to be the prevailing fashion in vengeful murder. Sometimes the bed sank into the ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... paths, to the bottom of a wooded hill where a motor lorry with picks and shovels met us. Thence along a narrow muddy path through a wood. The path circles round the hill. The east side of the hill faces the Boche front line. It was still quite light. The undergrowth thick and dank. Our fellows very merry. The Boches know this path, which is pitted with shell holes. They shell the place by day, oddly enough, but hardly ever ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... descends The autumn-evening. The field Strewn with its dank yellow drifts Of wither'd leaves, and the elms, Fade into dimness apace, Silent;—hardly a shout From a few boys late at their play! The lights come out in the street, In the school-room windows—but cold, Solemn, unlighted, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... M'Adam, she recognized that: the face pale in its framework of black; the hair lying dank and dark on his forehead; and the white eyelids blinking, slow, regular, horrible. She thought of the stories she had heard of his sworn vengeance on her father, and her heart stood still, though she never moved. At length with ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... into the hands of a Basque woman, who persuaded me to live with her, which I have done for several years; she is a great hax, {8} and says that if I desert her she will breathe a spell which shall cling to me for ever. Dem Got sey dank,—she is now in the hospital, and daily expected to die. This is my history, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... city of Chicago—who shall portray it! This vast ruck of life that had sprung suddenly into existence upon the dank marshes of ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... receive no further compensation in return," said John, "than, perhaps, the coy turning up of a lamp at an upper casement where the jasmine climbs; or an exasperating patter of invisible palms; or a huge dank wedge of fruit-cake shoved at you by the old man, through ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... Blinkerly Dank-some-Hankly triumphantly, "a perfect human race and teach it the immortal principles of woman's rights. So, if we can't persuade Parliament to come out for us, we'll take Parliament by the slack of its degraded trousers, some day, ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... heights of Murree, dank boughs dripped and drooped above ill-made houses, that gave free admittance to the moist outer world; tree ferns, springing to sudden life on moss-clad trunks and boughs, showed brilliant as emeralds on velvet. The whole earth was quick with hidden stirrings and strivings, ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... my throat was cold, My garments all were dank; Sure I had drunken in my dreams, And ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... winds were whispering through the wood, The rolling rill ran 'round the ragged rock; The shepherd, with his sunny, smiling face, Was far away to feed his flitting flock. Deep in the dingle, dank and dark—" ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer
... sees none of this. Another spectacle appears to his fancy, commands his eyes. Four walls, bare and dank, enclose a narrow cell, lighted by a single streak of day. On the moist and noisome floor is a mat; on the mat an old man dying. Beaten down by fever, he lies and looks about him, calling a name, in strangling voice, with tears. ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... them depart, and heard the noise of their going lapse into the bland monotony of the rain's noise. This dank night now divulged no more, and she turned back into the room. Adhelmar's glove, which he had forgotten in his haste, lay upon the floor, and Melite lifted ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... whirled. He held only a club as a means of defense. He was in rags. His black hair hung in dank locks about ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... turning from the main road, we entered a grass-grown by-path, which, in half an hour, nearly lost itself in a dense forest, clothing the base of a mountain. Through this dank and gloomy wood we rode some two miles, when the Maison de Sante came in view. It was a fantastic chateau, much dilapidated, and indeed scarcely tenantable through age and neglect. Its aspect inspired me with absolute ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the woods, the silence, the darkness. The wolves howling at night. Worst of all is the creeping horror of being chased. No! No! I can't stand any more, Basdel. The black horror comes over me when I let myself think of it. The dank woods—the silence—the awful stealth of night. No, no, Basdel. Let me ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... spiritual. And the results of all these many matters were, that now, at twenty years of age, Charles found himself, as it were, alone in a strange land, with many common friends indeed abroad, but at home no nearer, dearer ties to string his heart's dank lyre withal; neither mother nor brother, nor any other kind familiar face, to look upon his gentleness in love, or to sympathize with his affections, unapprehended, unappreciated: so—while Mrs. Tracy was the showy, gay, and vapid thing she ever had been, and Julian the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... delight me. Something must have happened in such places, and perhaps ages back, to members of my race; and when I was a child I tried in vain to invent appropriate games for them, as I still try, just as vainly, to fit them with the proper story. Some places speak distinctly. Certain dank gardens cry aloud for a murder; certain old houses demand to be haunted; certain coasts are set apart for shipwreck. Other spots again seem to abide their destiny, suggestive and impenetrable, "miching mallecho." The inn at Burford Bridge, with ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Gott sei Dank!" Sammet rejoined. "Aber if I did got one, y'understand, I would got Verstand enough to pick out a healthy woman, which Dishkes does everything the same. He picks out a store there on an avenue when it is a dead neighbourhood, understand me—and he ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... the touching words of our Dutch translator with whom I'm sure you'll heartily agree: Toch ben ik er mijn landgenooten dank baar voor, die mijn arbeid steeds zoo welwillend outvangen en wier genegenheid ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... revert; she sought the soil, but she was determined it should be the soil of her own choosing. She found Morrell coarse, dry, hard, sandy, gritty. What she sought was some dank, rich loam, dark, moist, productive. To be sure, great towering things grew in the sand—pine-trees, for example, with vast trunks and with broad heads that spread out far above the humbler growths below; but on the whole she preferred some lustrous-leaved shrub ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... gloom—was depressing. Such mawkish sentimentality and despair; such inane and mortifying confessions; such longings for a lover to come; such sighings over a lover departed; such cravings for "only"—"only" a grave in some dark, dank solitude. As Mrs. Dodge puts it, "Pegasus generally feels inclined to pace toward a graveyard the moment he feels a side-saddle on ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... made a fine stuffing of wild yearnings, hopeless tenderness, and a general admiration for stars. Then completely cover up one heart with a sufficient quantity of chill church-yard mould, which may be garnished according to taste with dank waving weeds or tender violets: and promptly break ...
— Every Man His Own Poet - Or, The Inspired Singer's Recipe Book • Newdigate Prizeman
... it upon awaking was almost as vivid as when I was immersed.... It began very slowly with a growing perception of a low monotonous lap and wash of water and a slight heaving, lifting sensation, as of my being swayed gently to and fro. It was very cold, not the biting cold we know, but a dank, lifeless, penetrating cold of water and darkness.... The manner of my own form was not clear to me; I was of too low a consciousness to be aware of many exterior particulars. I merely knew I belonged to ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... neighbourhood. Tempted by the beauty of the night, he dismissed his carriage, and, turning from the high road, took a by-path which led to the city. The air was serene and mild. The moon-light was sufficiently clear to chase away night's dank vapours. The ground had imperceptibly risen, until having ascended a grassy eminence, over which the path stretched, the well-lighted city burst ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... what a unity, to mean them all!— The peach-dyed morn; cold stars in colder blue Gazing across upon the sun-dyed west, While the dank wind is running o'er the graves; Green buds, red flowers, brown leaves, and ghostly snow; The grassy hills, breeze-haunted on the brow; And sandy deserts hung with stinging stars! Half-vanished hangs the moon, with daylight sick, Wan-faced ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... chills, which shook me one after another like so many shocks of electricity, while the perspiration produced by my late violent exertions congealed in icy beads upon my forehead. My thirst was gone, and I fairly loathed the water. Starting to my feet, the sight of those dank rocks, oozing forth moisture at every crevice, and the dark stream shooting along its dismal channel, sent fresh chills through my shivering frame, and I felt as uncontrollable a desire to climb up towards the genial sunlight as I before had ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... world as she walked along the broad clean sidewalk with the handsome old houses on either side, with carriages and automobiles speeding past, with clean, happy-faced, well dressed human beings in sight everywhere. It was like coming out of the dank darkness of Dismal Swamp into smiling fields with a pure, star-spangled sky above. She was free—free! It might be for but a moment; still it was freedom, infinitely sweet because of past slavery and because of the fear of slavery closing in again. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... been, and why this most unusual punishment had been meted out to him. Mystery! That was the charm. That speechless tongue, those prisoned features, that heart so freighted with unspoken troubles, and that breast so oppressed with its piteous secret had been here. These dank walls had known the man whose dolorous story is a sealed book forever! There ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... kind offered the mind a breathing place under the free sky. Sometimes the pine groves,—vast, solemn, grand, with the patrician aloofness of the truly great; sometimes the hardwood,—bright, mysterious, full of life; sometimes the swamps,—dark, dank, speaking with the voices of the shyer creatures; sometimes the spruce and balsam thickets,—aromatic, enticing. But never the clear, ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... on a deal table discovered for all other furnishing broken chairs, coils of tarred rope, a rack of ponderous oars and boat-hooks, a display of shapeless oilskins and sou'westers on pegs. The windows were boarded up from sills to lintels, the air was close and dank with the stale flavour of ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... evidently no bark in him, poor little fellow; everything about him said that he had just managed to crawl home to die. His brisk white coat seemed dank with cold dews, and there was something shadowy about him and strangely quiet. His eyes, always so alert, were strangely heavy and indifferent, yet questioning and somehow accusing. He seemed to be asking us why a little dog should suffer ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... moss, broken pillar, and defaced architrave, with magnificent projects in his mind of restoring all this to former majesty, to draw out to light from mere rubbish the ruined glories, and therefore stooping down amongst the dank ivy and the rank nettles; such was Christ amidst the wreck of human nature. He was striving to lift it out of its degradation. He was searching out in revolting places that which had fallen down, that He might build it up again in fair proportions a ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... the door, and D'ri flung our "duds" into the darkness that lay beyond it. Then he made down the ladder, and I after him. It was pitch-dark in the cellar—a deep, dank place with a rank odor of rotting potatoes. We groped our way to a corner, and stood listening. We heard the tramp of horses in the dooryard and the clinic of spurs ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... rifle; but compassion prevailing, I determined to let him sleep awhile, and then to arouse him, and administer a suitable reproof for such a forgetfulness of duty. Now and then I walked the rounds among the silent horses, to see that all was right. The night was chill, damp, and dark, the dank grass bending under the icy dewdrops. At the distance of a rod or two the tents were invisible, and nothing could be seen but the obscure figures of the horses, deeply breathing, and restlessly starting as they slept, or still slowly champing the grass. Far off, beyond the black ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... the joint strength of the two captives forced it from its hinges. They now entered a vaulted passage of hewn stone, low and narrow, and with no visible termination. As they advanced, the long pent-up and dank unwholesome vapours made it difficult to breathe, and compelled Ibrahim to pause repeatedly and trim his lamp, which burned so dimly in this oppressive atmosphere as to be nearly extinguished. After a while the path began to slope upwards, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... the level of the fens there are dense woods tangled with parasitic creepers and filled with owls. Bats fly from wood to wood. The air on the lower ground is charged with the poisonous gases which exude from the marsh, while in the woods it is heavy with the dank odours of deadly ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... custom, during the heat of the day, to paddle along the shallows or sit and enjoy the cool air. There was always a breeze at the mouth of Corkscrew Gorge, and when it drew down, as it did on this day, it carried the odors of dank caverns. In the dark and gloomy depths of this gash through the hills the rocks were always damp and cold; and beneath the great waterfalls, where the cloudbursts had scooped out pot-holes, there was a delicious ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... through the ravine grew colder as they descended. Then the dank atmosphere became strongly permeated with the odor of fish. Gregory felt a hand ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... New York, the young Prince landed in San Francisco. He had come by way of the Orient, accompanied by the Chief of Staff of the Graustark Army, Count Quinnox,—hereditary watch-dog to the royal family!—and a young lieutenant of the guard, Boske Dank. Two men were they who would have given a thousand lives in the service of their Prince. No less loyal was the body-servant who looked after the personal wants of the eager young traveller, an Englishman of the name of Hobbs. ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Marybone, alack! Thy sorrels dragg'd thee, through the worst of ways? Oil-dropping Twickenham did not then detain Thy steps, though tended by the Cambrian maids; 10 Nor the sweet environs of Drury Lane; Nor dusty Pimlico's embowering shades; Nor Whitehall, by the river's bank, Beset with rowers dank; Nor where the Exchange pours forth its tawny sons; Nor where, to mix with offal, soil, and blood, Steep Snowhill rolls the sable flood; Nor where the Mint's contamined kennel runs: Ill doth it now beseem, That thou should'st doze and dream, 20 When Death in mortal armour came, ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... and with the lightest of fingers untied the collar of her son's doublet and linen shirt, before bending lower, with her long curls drooping round his face, till she could kiss his brow, no longer dank and chilly, but softly, ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... sets with extraordinary rapidity. The venerable and somewhat crazy mansion was distinguished from afar, by a grove of elms and sycamores that seemed to wave a hospitable invitation, while a few weeping willows with their dank, drooping foliage, resembling falling waters, gave an idea of coolness, that rendered it an attractive spot during the ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... the dark object and saw that it was a fallen tree. The wound in the earth caused by its torn-up roots formed a sort of cavern where the slenderer tentacles hung limp like tropical foliage. If there was a means of entrance to this dank little shelter it must be from the farther side. Even where Gilbert stood the atmosphere was redolent of the damp earth of this crazy little retreat. For retreat it certainly was, because there was a light in it. Gilbert could only see the reflection of the ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the extraordinary number of laurel bushes about the house. The place was smothered with them; so that the house seemed to be growing up out of a sea of green laurel. These, and the grim, ancient look of the old building, made the place look a bit dank and ghostly, ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... represent that evening,—and with her usual success; for no woman ever knew more thoroughly her material of shape or color, or how to work it up. Not an ill-chosen fancy, either, that of the moist, warm month. Some tranced summer's day might have drowsed down into such a human form by a dank pool, or on the thick grass-crusted meadows. There was the full contour of the limbs hid under warm green folds, the white flesh that glowed when you touched it as if some smothered heat lay beneath, the sleeping face, the amber hair uncoiled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... out, and the scene shifts to the vaults in the depths under the castle,—dank, unwholesome depths, that exhale an odor of death, where the darkness is "like poisoned slime." Golaud leads his brother through the vaults, which Pelleas had seen only once, long ago. "Here is the ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... servants as "Mum," and curtsy before them, squaring their arms over their wretched lean aprons. Then, again, those servi servorum have dependants in the vast, silent, poverty-stricken world outside your comfortable kitchen fire, in the world of darkness, and hunger, and miserable cold, and dank, flagged cellars, and huddled straw, and rags, in which pale children are swarming. It may be your beer (which runs with great volubility) has a pipe or two which communicates with those dark caverns where hopeless anguish pours the groan, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and gone, To the rice swamp dank and lone, Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings, Where the noisome insect stings, Where the fever-demon strews Poison with the falling dews, Where the sickly sunbeams glare Through the hot and misty air:— Gone, gone, sold and gone To the rice swamp dank and lone, From Virginia hills ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... the mystic grove. There stood the ancient and much slandered statues, overshadowed by tall larches, and stained by dank green mold. It is not a matter of surprise that strange figures, thus behoofed and be-horned, and set up in a gloomy grove, should perplex the minds of the simple and superstitious yeomanry. There are many of the tastes and caprices of the rich, that in the eyes of ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... them. Besides those Old Believers, numerous other sects exist. They in their turn are surrounded by a strange fringe of "Runners," "Jumpers," "Flagellants," "Self-Mutilators," and other eccentric or anti-social pests which crop up most thickly in the dank shadow of an obscurantist despotism, whose very roots, however, they gradually destroy and encroach upon. Persecuted men often seek solace in wild hopes and prophetic beliefs, which, if strongly nurtured by agitation, are apt to imperil the persecutor. Under Nicholas, the persecutor ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... . "Und will von Herzen gern der Thor der Thoren seyn; Jngst that ich ernst: gleich hielt die Narrheit mich beym Rocke. Wo, rief sie, willst du hin,—Du! weisst du unsern Bund. Ist das der Dank? ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... brakes, or the hot breeze moved its pestilential plants; and in the silence they stood fronting each other; in this silence they had met, in it they would part. And there, on their right hand, through the break in the dank wall of leaves, shone the sun, looking earthward, luminous, and blinding human sight ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... handsome man of early middle age, who might indeed have passed for a young man, had he not looked very tired and care-worn and exhibited a bald patch at the back of his head, rendered the more apparent because the brown-gold curls round it were dank with perspiration. He rose to his feet, clicked his heels together and saluted. "An English young lady, I am told, rather ... a ... surprise ... on ... the ... outskirts ... of Brussels..." (His English was excellent, if rather staccato and spaced.) "It ... is ... not ... usual ... for ... ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... he came near Colonsay Castle, at sight of which the desire awoke in him to look again on the scene of Lady Florimel's terror. He crossed the head of the little bay and descended into the heart of the rock. Even there the wind blew dank and howling through all the cavernous hollows. As he approached the last chamber, out of the Devil's Window flew, with clanging wing, an arrow barbed seagull, down to the grey veiled tumult below, and the joy of life for a moment seized his soul. But the next, the dismay of that which is ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... applauded by a crash of glass as one of the upper windows of the house broke and came raining down in splinters. The lean young man swore tersely. "Another window!" he snarled. The Baron lowered his arm and let his breath go in a sigh of relief. "That is all, is it not?" he demanded. "Gott sei Dank I hate things that explode. But I am glad that I saw it, now that it is over, very ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... eerie the moor-birds protested against this invasion of their haunts. The moon came slowly up over the eastern end of the moor, flinging a silver radiance abroad, and softening the shadows cast by the hills. A strange, dank smell rose from the mossy ground—the scent of rotting heather and withered grass, mixed with the beautiful perfume from ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... lower, and worse lighted, than the contemporary crypt of St. Peter's-in-the-East, but not, perhaps, less interesting. The square-headed capitals have not been touched, like some of those in St. Peter's, by a later chisel. The place is dank and earthy, but otherwise much as Robert D'Oily left it. There is an odd-looking arrangement of planks on the floor. It is THE NEW DROP, which is found to work very well, and gives satisfaction to ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... and huge Hack caps, with cruel lips and hard, steely eyes, sitting in solemn state in a gloomy hall and dispensing death, disgrace, or long terms of prison, at the very least, to all comers. For her, the police-station was a dungeon, and she fancied the Count chained to a dank and slimy wall in a painful position, chilled to the marrow by the touch of the dripping stone, his teeth chattering, his face distorted with suffering. Of course he was in a solitary cell, behind a heavy door, braced ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... was The Shadow, barred my way. He seemed to have a helmet upon his head, but as I drew closer I perceived it was the head itself I saw—so distorted as to bear but a doubtful resemblance to the human. A cold wind smote me, dank and sickening—repulsive as the air of a charnel-house; firmness forsook my joints, and my limbs trembled as if they would drop in a helpless heap. I seemed to pass through him, but I think now that he passed through me: for ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... hear that he excels, And he insures Immediate cures Of weird, uncanny spells; The most unruly patient Gets docile as a lamb And is freed from ill by the potent skill Of Hoodoo-Doctor Sam; Feathers of strangled chickens, Moss from the dank lagoon, And plasters wet With spider sweat In the ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... ear on the voice of the Grig, And his heart it grew heavy as lead As he marked the Baldekin adjusting his wing On the opposite side of his head, And the air it grew chill as the Gryxabodill Raised his dank, dripping fins to the skies, And plead with the Plunk for the use of her bill To pick the ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... elevated if non-exhilarating view of back yards, one and all dank, dismal, and littered with the debris of a long, hard winter. Familiarity, however, had rendered P. Sybarite immune to the miasma of melancholy they exhaled; the trouble in his patient blue eyes, the wrinkles that lined his forehead, owned ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... land that the Rmoahal race was born. Roughly it may be located at latitude 7 deg. north and longitude 5 deg. west, which a reference to any modern atlas will show to lie on the Ashanti coast of to-day. It was a hot, moist country, where huge antediluvian animals lived in reedy swamps and dank forests. The fossil remains of such plants are to-day found in the coal measures. The Rmoahals were a dark race—their complexion being a sort of mahogany black. Their height in these early days was about ten or ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot |
