"Darkling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to say. The halo with which the Byzantine mosaicists surrounded the faces of their saints, the glory of golden light that gleams about the figure of Christ in heaven in Tintoretto's decorations, the blank bright walls of the Doge's palace undermined by darkling and shadowy arcades, the refrain of a Provencal song, the sharp shadow under the visor of Verrocchio's equestrian statue, the thought-provoking chiaroscuro of Rembrandt's figure paintings—these expedients are all designed to attract attention ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... the rocks, where her clear waters lave The circling, gloomy basin.—In such scene, Silent, sequester'd, few demand, I ween, That last perfection Phidian chisels gave. Dimly the soft and musing Form is seen In the hush'd, shelly, shadowy, lone concave.— As sleeps her pure, tho' darkling fountain there, I love to recollect her, stretch'd supine Upon its mossy brink, with pendent hair, As dripping o'er the flood.—Ah! well combine Such gentle graces, modest, pensive, fair, To aid the magic of her ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... and go, The tided oceans ebb and flow; The tokens of a central force, Whose circles, in their widening course, O'erlap and move the universe; The workings of the law whence springs The rhythmic harmony of things, Which shapes in earth the darkling spar, And orbs in heaven the morning star. Of all I see, in earth and sky,— Star, flower, beast, bird,—what part have I? This conscious life,—is it the same Which thrills the universal frame, Whereby the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... morning of ill-omen, and the darkling sky but reflected the gloom of our faces; our thoughts were in keeping with the day, for we had lost a shipmate, one among us was gone, Old Martin ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... could imagine the flat land around them as his native Holland, with the Zuider Zee sparkling to the west where here the desert stretched under darkling clouds. ...
— Wind • Charles Louis Fontenay
... Nightly I visit; nor sometimes forget Those other two equalled with me in fate, So were I equalled with them in renown, Blind Thamyris and blind Maeonides, And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old: Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird Sings darkling, and, in shadiest covert hid, Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year Seasons return; but not to me returns Day or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, Or flocks, or ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... the new gardens where life leads us we never learn the shrubs and trees by heart as we did as children in our old Garden of Eden, round the little gabled house where we were born. We were so thorough as children. We knew the underneath of every laurel-bush, the shape of its bunches of darkling branches, the green dust that our small restless bodies rubbed off from its under twigs. We see now as strangers those little hanging horse-tails of pink, which sad-faced elders call ribes; but once long ago, when the world was young, we knew ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... were sleepin' on your pillows, Dream'd ye ought o' our puir fellows, Darkling as they faced the billows, A' to fill the woven willows. Buy my caller herrin', New ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... figure loom; And naught aroused me save his weeping voice of tender tone * And whispered I, 'Fair fall thy foot and welcome and well come!' His cheek I kissed a thousand times, and yet a thousand more; * Then clipt and clung about his breast enveiled in darkling room. And cried, 'Now verily I've won the aim of every wish * So praise and prayers to Allah for this grace now best become.' Then slept we even as we would the goodliest of nights * Till morning came to end our night and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... his eyes to those of Megabyzus, he saw them filled with a strange fire—eyes like those of an evil spirit, gleaming behind the living windows of darkling hue. It was but for a moment, and the priest ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... is a forgotten streak of day That trembles through the hemlocks' darkling bars, And still, my heart, still some divine delay Upon the ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... electric light whose intensity can be gradually lessened by means of a sliding resistance. Here, as much as in the natural phenomenon, our reason finds it difficult to acknowledge that the surface gleaming in a whitish sheen should be the one which ordinarily appears as darkling blue, and that the one disappearing into darkness should be the surface which normally presents itself as ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... the vale, To keep her tryst with Ulnor's lord; A warrior clad in coat of mail Stood darkling by the ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... exten- sive travel, and twenty years in the pulpit, have equipped him as a critic who knows whereof he speaks. His allu- sion to Christian Science in the following paragraph, [15] glows in the shadow of darkling criticism like a mid- night sun. Its manly honesty follows like a benediction after prayer, and closes the task of talking to deaf ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... soft and slow, From darkling earth and darkened sky Wide wings of gloom waved to and fro, ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... darkling glance of Mrs. Pett, she had altered the arrangements of the house. Flowers appeared on the meal-table, knives and forks were properly cleaned, and plates no longer appeared ornamented with the mustard of a previous meal. Fresh air circulated through ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... dangerous, and fatal; and if it be possible to devise means of freeing ourselves from it, we ought at once to set about the employing of those means. It would be the most wretched and imbecile fatuity, to shut our eyes to the impending dangers and horrors, and "drive darkling down the current of our fate," till we are overwhelmed in the final destruction. If we are tyrants, cruel, unjust, oppressive, let us humble ourselves and repent in the sight of heaven, that the foul stain may be cleansed, and we enabled to stand erect as having ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... o'er moving worlds presides, Whose voice created, and whose wisdom guides, On darkling man in pure effulgence shine, And cheer his clouded mind ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... and prayed his aid to retrieve my purse, and so to Rhine? Fool! is he not a man, like the rest? He would scorn me and trample me lower. Denys cursed the race of men. That will I never; but oh, I begin to loathe and dread them. Nay, here will I lie till sunset: then darkling creep into this rich man's barn, and take by stealth a draught of milk or a handful o' grain, to keep body and soul together. God, who hath seen the rich rob me, will peradventure forgive me. They say 'tis ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the fleeting gloom. O Night! thy smiles are short, and short thy shade; Thou art a freakish friend, and all unstay'd: Yet from thy varied changes who are free? Full many an honest friend resembles thee. Then let my doubtful footsteps darkling stray, Thy next fair beam will set me on my way: E'en take thy freedom, whether rough or kind, I came not forth to quarrel ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... shone, Fared the steamer alert and loud through seas whence only the sun was gone: Soft and sweet as the sky they smiled, and bade man welcome: a dim sweet hour Gleamed and whispered in wind and sea, and heaven was fair as a field in flower. Stars fulfilled the desire of the darkling world as with music: the starbright air Made the face of the sea, if aught may make the face of ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars Did wander darkling in the eternal space, Rayless, and pathless, and the icy Earth Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day, And men forgot their passions in the dread Of this their desolation; and all hearts Were chilled into a selfish prayer for light: And they ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... cylinders in absolute silence. It was a crescent with twelve miles between its horns. Never since the devising of gunpowder was the beginning of a battle so still. To us and to an observer about Ripley it would have had precisely the same effect—the Martians seemed in solitary possession of the darkling night, lit only as it was by the slender moon, the stars, the afterglow of the daylight, and the ruddy glare from St. George's Hill ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... its pearly light, Within the cedar'd panels, dusky pale; No mirror'd walls the wandering glance invite, No gauzy curtains drop the misty veil. And there the vista leads of lessening doors, And there the summer sunset's golden gleam Along the line of darkling portrait pours, And warms the polish'd oak or ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... as if the heavens should give up their secret, and smite us with the music of the spheres. Suddenly, unheralded, up over the summit of Mount Moriah came the full moan, a silver disc, a lucent, steady orb, globular and grand, filling the valleys with light, touching all things into a hushed and darkling splendor. To us, standing alone, far from sight of human face or sound of human voice, it seemed the censer of God, swung out to receive ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... if my brother died, 'Twas but a fatal chance; For darkling was the battle tried, ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... Vikings, were alternately pirates and hucksters, as opportunity served. Every occupation must have its heavenly patron, its departmental deity, and Hermes protects thieves and raiders, "minions of the moon," "clerks of St. Nicholas." His very birth is a stolen thing, the darkling fruit of a divine amour in a dusky cavern. Il chasse ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... expelled by Louis XV., he adopted (what has never, perhaps, been observed) the wild advice of d'Argenson ('La Bete,' and Louis's ex- minister of foreign affairs), he betook himself to a life of darkling adventures, to a hidden and homeless exile. In many of his journeys he found Pickle in his path, and Pickle finally made his labours vain. The real source of all this imbroglio, in addition to an exasperated daring and a strangely secretive temperament, was ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... some fine old trees, lindens, acacias, chestnuts, a flat-topped Lombardy pine, a darkling ilex, besides the willow that overhung the river, and the poplars that stiffly stood along its border. Then there was the peacock-blue river itself, dancing and singing as it sped away, with a thousand diamonds flashing on its surface—floating, sinking, rising—where ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... thrice welcome, the auspicious day, When from the mountain where he darkling lay, The Polish sun into the firmament Sprung all the brighter for his late ascent, And in ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... "Darkness," Byron has imagined such a blind and darkling world as these legends depict; and he has imagined, too, the hunger, and the desolation, and ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... Like darkling birds her eyelashes Upon her cheek lay fluttering light. Her kirtle's swinging cadences Displayed her ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... does remorse seize on Tim Cannon, being a person of no moral convictions whatever; and as for dread and disappointment—one moment he steadies his darkling blue eyes on the aspect of them, and the next is racing after the car, swinging aboard, and setting the brakes, though the wheels lock and coast on down the rails, slippery with rain. For it is not the nature of him to falter or to parley with fortune—when she declares against him he ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... night, upsprung the breeze, And all the darkling hours they plied, Nor dreamt but each the self-same seas By each was cleaving ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... and herd! sleep, darkling thorpe and croft, Safe from the weather! He whom we convoy to his grave aloft, Singing together, He was a man born with thy face and throat, Lyric Apollo! Long he lived nameless: how should spring take note Winter would follow? Till lo, the little touch, and youth was gone! Cramped and diminished, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... stone could have been no colder as she stood in the light of the fire, her face still and strong, the eyes darkling, luminous. There was on her the dignity of the fearless, the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... with visions, and his ears With harmonies of wind and wave and wood —Of winds which tell of waters, and of waters Betraying the close kisses of the wind— And win him unto me: and few there be So gross of heart who have not felt and known A higher than they see: They with dim eyes Behold me darkling. Lo! I have given thee To understand my presence, and to feel My fullness; I have fill'd thy lips with power. I have rais'd thee higher to the Spheres of Heaven, Man's first, last home: and thou with ravish'd ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... silence; short or long, it seemed brief to me, who was now asleep at last, and I was rueful enough when a sound aroused me, and I found the Maid herself standing by my bedside, with one in the shadow behind her. The chamber was all darkling, lit only by a thread of light that came through the closed shutters of wood, and fell on her pale face. She was clad in a light jaseran of mail, because of her wound, and was plainly eager to be gone and about her business, that is, to meet ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... bluish haze showed themselves between the hills. The latter were more precipitous; and the brush had now given way to pines of better size and quality than those seen lower down. The river foamed over rapids or ran darkling in pools and stretches. Along the roadside, rarely, we came upon rough-looking log cabins, or shacks of canvas, or tents. The owners were not at home. We thought them miners; but in the light of subsequent knowledge ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... Abode of silence and sweet summer dreams— Let speculation pass, nor progress touch Thy silvan homes with hard, unhallowed hand! The light wind whispers, and the air is rich With vapours which exhale into the night; And, round me here, this village in the leaves Darkling doth slumber. How those giant pears Loom with uplifted and high-ancient heads, Like forest trees! A hundred years ago They, like their owner, had their roots in France— In fruitful Normandy—but here ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... fame, These foaming straits shall bear his deathless name. Through these dread jaws of rock he presses on Another ocean's breast, immense, unknown, Beneath the south's cold wings, unmeasur'd, wide, Received his vessels, through the dreary tide, In darkling shades, where never man before Heard the waves howl, he dares ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... Proctor invokes the aid of Mr. Grewgious, but does not explain why Grewgious was on the spot. I venture to think it not inconceivable that Mr. Grewgious having come down to Cloisterham by a late train, on Christmas Eve, to keep his Christmas appointment with Rosa, paid a darkling visit to the tomb of his lost love, Rosa's mother. Grewgious was very sentimental, but too secretive to pay such a visit by daylight. "A night of memories and sighs" he might "consecrate" to his lost lady ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... fingertip that wasn't as calloused as he could have wished, philosophically sucked in strangling fumes of rankest shag and, ignoring his company in the carriage as became a British-made manservant, returned jaded, gentle eyes to those darkling vistas of autumnal landscape that were forever radiating away from the window like spokes ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... another, viz.: money, might be added with good effect. Fear, and the other low and bad qualities of the slave, are appealed to, but never the good. The relation, therefore, between capital and labor, which ought to be generous and confiding, is darkling, suspicious, unkindly, full of reproachful threats, and without concord or peace. This condition of things renders the interests of society a prey to politicians. Politics cease to be ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... apace. The silver of the eastern sky changed to gold, deeper and deeper, till the yellow merged into a roseate sheen which shone down upon the cloud mists, and tinged them with the hue of blood. Light was over the darkling forests, and as it brightened the voice of the forest legions died away in the distance, and the battleground was deserted of all but the author of ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... revealed its full breadth with crystalline distinctness. Between sky and water there stretched across the picture a broad, looming, dimly-defined band of shadow, marked here and there at the top by little slanting patches of an intensely glowing white. He looked at this darkling middle distance for a moment or two without comprehension. Then he turned and hurriedly moved to the door of Julia's room and beat ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... foe. The wind now acting on the sails of the Serapis forced her, heel and point, her entire length, cheek by jowl, alongside the Richard. The projecting cannon scraped; the yards interlocked; but the hulls did not touch. A long lane of darkling water lay wedged between, like that narrow canal in Venice which dozes between two shadowy piles, and high in air is secretly crossed by the Bridge of Sighs. But where the six yard-arms reciprocally arched overhead, three bridges of sighs were both ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... Darkling I listen; and for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... It runs through the reeds, And away it proceeds, Through meadow and glade, In sun and in shade, And through the wood-shelter, Among crags in its flurry, Helter-skelter, Hurry-skurry. Here it comes sparkling, And there it lies darkling; Now smoking and frothing Its tumult and wrath in, Till, in this rapid race On which it is bent, It reaches the place Of its ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... perfectly content so only that it did not come up too late to witness the glories which its bold flights discovered. Thanks to it—all thanks to it—I did not become a nympholept. I did not haunt Parliament Hill o' nights. I did not spy upon the darkling motions of Mrs. Ventris. Desire, appetite, sex were not involved at all in this affair; nor yet was love. I was very prone to love, but I did not love Mrs. Ventris. In whatsoever fairy being I had seen there had been nothing which held physical attraction for me. There could ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... shore, Where bleak Northumbria pours her savage train 150 In sable squadrons o'er the northern main; That, with her pitchy entrails stored, resort, A sooty tribe, to fair Augusta's port: Where'er in ambush lurk the fatal sands, They claim the danger, proud of skilful bands; For while with darkling course their vessels sweep The winding shore, or plough the faithless deep, O'er bar and shelf the watery path they sound With dexterous arm, sagacious of the ground: Fearless they combat every hostile wind, 160 Wheeling in mazy tracks, with course inclined: Expert ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... though, and the inference is that everybody does. As for the lady, that is not so hard of belief. It very seldom is—with women. They sit so much at windows, that pretty soon their eyes become windows themselves—out of which the soul looks darkling, but preening; out of which it sometimes launches itself into the deep, wooed thereto or not by aubade or serena. But a man, with his vanity haunting him, pulls the blinds down or shuts the shutters, to have it decently to himself, and his looking-glass; ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... reached the outlying Cruisers, and nearly dark when the first ship in the Battle Fleet hailed them. Then hail answered hail as one Battleship after another rose towering above them into the darkling sky, and one by ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... He turned with sudden movement, gave his hand To each in turn, and said, "You must not stand Longer, young ladies, in this open door. The air is heavy with a cold damp chill. We shall have rain to-morrow, or before. Good night." He vanished in the darkling shade; And so the dreaded evening found an end, That saw me grasp the conscience-whetted blade, And strike a blow for honor ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the moon now peers Out of darkling clouds. The sad, Sleepless waterfalls forever Roar into the ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... and splendid, giant-like I stood On a white cliff, topped by a darkling wood. Below me, placid, bright and sparkling, lay The equal waters of a lovely bay. White cliffs surrounded it—and calm and fair It lay asleep, in ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... my soul beguile, Why hast thou left me? Still in some fond dream Revisit my sad heart, auspicious Smile! As falls on closing flowers the lunar beam: What time, in sickly mood, at parting day 5 I lay me down and think of happier years; Of joys, that glimmer'd in Hope's twilight ray, Then left me darkling in a vale of tears. O pleasant days of Hope—for ever gone! Could I recall you!—But that thought is vain. 10 Availeth not Persuasion's sweetest tone To lure the fleet-wing'd Travellers back again: Yet fair, though faint, their ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the people as a God rever'd: Him, as he fled before him, from behind Eurypylus, Euaemon's noble son, Smote with the sword; and from the shoulder-point The brawny arm he sever'd; to the ground Down fell the gory hand; the darkling shades Of death, and rig'rous doom, ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... hillward the roads are sweet with fern. All day the windless heaven pavilions the sea-blue, Then twilight comes and drenches the sultry dells with dew. The lone white star of evening comes out among the hills, And in the darkling forest begin the whip-poor-wills. The fireflies that wander, the hawks that flit and scream, And all the wilding vagrants of summer dusk and dream, Have all their will, and reck not of any after thing, Inheriting no sorrow and no foreshadowing. The wind forgets to whisper, the pines ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... thinking this, the first time she saw the passenger with the red hair. She had paused by mere chance, and while her eyes were stormy with her thought, she suddenly became conscious that she was looking directly into other eyes as darkling as her own. They were those of a man on the wrong side of the barrier. He had a troubled, brooding face, and, as their gaze met, each of them started slightly and turned away with the sense of having unconsciously intruded and ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... suddenly into wet snow that packs about the lake gardens clear to the blossom frills, and melts away harmlessly. Sometimes one has the good fortune from a heather-grown headland to watch a rain-cloud forming in mid-air. Out over meadow or lake region begins a little darkling of the sky,—no cloud, no wind, just a smokiness such as spirits materialize ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... touched my foot, and made me a sign to look at Monsieur Taillefer. The former purveyor had negligently dropped his hand over his eyes, but between the interstices of his fingers we thought we caught a darkling ...
— The Red Inn • Honore de Balzac
... Vanrevel has met my daughter," he said, in a thick voice, stretching out both hands in a strange, menacing gesture toward the town that lay darkling in the growing dusk, "if he has addressed one word to her, or so much as allowed his eyes to rest on her overlong, let him take ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... him in the midst of this strange element that with might and main he tore asunder the network of plants and swam back to land in breathless haste. And when from the shore he looked back upon the lake, there floated the lily on the bosom of the darkling water as far away and as lonely ...
— Immensee • Theodore W. Storm
... these children of the city ran down the hill to their home, in infinite astonishment. And ere they reached it, Elizabeth was weeping with dismay, and the darkling ground about them was white and brittle and active with the ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... the mud the darkling fishes grope. Cautious to stir, staring with jewel eyes; Dogs of the sea, the savage congers mope, ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... good-naturedly; and went into the gallery, giving an arm to his lady. They passed thence through the music-gallery, long since dismantled, and Queen Elizabeth's Rooms, in the clock-tower, and out into the terrace, where was a fine prospect of sunset and the great darkling woods with a cloud of rooks returning; and the plain and river with Castlewood village beyond, and purple hills beautiful to look at—and the little heir of Castlewood, a child of two years old, was already here on the terrace in his nurse's ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... Alice's cloak as their hurried travelling would permit; sometimes one of Alice's hands was loosened for a moment to be passed round Ellen's shoulders, and a word of courage or comfort in the clear calm tone, cheered her to renewed exertion. The night fell fast; it was very darkling by the time they reached the bottom of the hill, and the road did not yet allow them to turn their faces towards Mrs. Van Brunt's. A wearisome piece of the way this was, leading them from the place they wished to reach. They could ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... heard my boyhood speak to me, and felt again the old breath on my brow. The sun died away across the old swaying woods; the rattling hone upon the scythe; the measured sweep; the mellow music—all were gone away. The day was done, and the long twilight came—twilight, which mixes the crimson of the darkling west, the yellow moonlight in the azure east, and the red glimmering starlight overhead, into one magic light. And so we went home merrily, with pleasant thoughts and talk; such pleasant thoughts I wish to all. Thus wrote one who ever ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... A darkling shade settled on the face of the devoted secretary. Here was the business utterly spoiled! It was the gloom of anger, and even of apprehension. He would perhaps have made a dash for it through the back door, if Heyst had not been heard ascending the front steps. He climbed them ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... the scarf, and flowers are hung In crimson clusters all the boughs among, Whereon all day are gathered bird and bee; And oft at nights the garden overflows With one sweet song that seems to have no close, Sung darkling from ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... passing twice before me where I leaned against a pillar. The priest who seemed of most consequence was a strange, down-looking old man. He kept mumbling prayers with his lips; but as he looked upon me darkling, it did not seem as if prayer were uppermost in his heart. Two others, who bore the burthen of the chant, were stout, brutal, military-looking men of forty, with bold, over-fed eyes; they sang with some lustiness, and trolled forth "Ave Mary" like ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... encouragement, not forgetting my old ruse to incite the Rube by rousing his temper. And then, as the gong rang and the Rube was departing, Nan stepped forward for her say. There was a little white under the tan on her cheek, and her eyes had a darkling flash. ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... consented; and each one's particular fear was turned, ah me! to my single destruction. And now the dreadful day was at hand; the rites were being ordered for me, the salted corn, and the chaplets to wreathe my temples. I broke away, I confess it, from death; I burst my bonds, and lurked all night darkling in the sedge of the marshy pool, till they might set their sails, if haply they should set them. Nor have I any hope more of seeing my old home nor my sweet children and the father whom I desire. Of them will they even haply claim vengeance ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... he seeks a last retreat Deep in the darkling dell, Where stands, amidst embowering oaks, A hermit's ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... shone the sun in a fair even-tide; Those ten men's mules in stall he bade them tie. Also a tent in the orchard raise on high, Those messengers had lodging for the night; Dozen serjeants served after them aright. Darkling they lie till comes the clear daylight. That Emperour does with the morning rise; Matins and Mass are said then in his sight. Forth goes that King, and stays beneath a pine; Barons he calls, good counsel to define, For with his Franks he's ever ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... so suddenly and so strangely did the fires shoot forth. As the beacon flame increased, it lighted up the whole of the extensive table-land on the summit of Pendle Hill; and a long lurid streak fell on the darkling moss-pool near which the wizard had stood. But when it attained its utmost height, it revealed the depths of the forest below, and a red reflection, here and there, marked the course of Pendle Water. The excitement of the abbot and his companions momently increased, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... lady. They passed thence through the music-gallery, long since dismantled, and Queen Elizabeth's rooms, in the clock-tower, and out into the terrace, where was a fine prospect of sunset, and the great darkling woods with a cloud of rooks returning; and the plain and river with Castlewood village beyond, and purple hills beautiful to look at—and the little heir of Castlewood, a child of two years old, was already here on ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Darkling they rode, and in silence, as though by consent. Ruth had never travelled this high way before: it glimmered across a country of which she knew nothing and could see nothing. But no shadow of fear crossed her spirit. Her heart was hushed; yet ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... deliberate presence of the Sun (Bright cynosure of every darkling sign, Wherein all numbers consummate in One,) Poised on the bolt of an Un-finite line, As one whose spirit's state, Is unafraid but desperate, Through far unfathomed fears, Through Time to timeless years, I soar, ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... crowded pavements, towards the Man Sagar Lake, where ruined temples and palaces dreamed and gleamed, knee deep in the darkling water; where jackals prowled and cranes nested and muggers dozed unheeding. At a point of vantage above the Lake, they halted and sat there awhile in darkness—a group of silent shadows. Words did not meet the case. Even Vernon ceased his jigging and ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... so. He could not understand what it was that made a darkling mist of her eyes and gave her parted lips such ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... darking Arches above him! Loveliest weather, Born of blue ether, Break from the sky! O that the darkling Clouds had departed! Starlight is sparkling, Tranquiller-hearted Suns are on high. Heaven's own children In beauty bewildering, Waveringly bending, Pass as they hover; Longing unending Follows them over. They, ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... employ several adjectives that are not used in prose, or are used but seldom; as, azure, blithe, boon, dank, darkling, darksome, doughty, dun, fell, rife, rapt, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... sun at last Went down to his lodge in the west, and fast The wings of the spirits of night were spread O'er the darkling woods and Wiwst's head. Then, slyly she slipped from her snug retreat, And guiding her course by Wazya's star, [62] That shone through the shadowy forms afar, She northward hurried with silent feet; And long ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... more so. In deference to the strange and unaccountable desires of their English-speaking guests the larger hotels in Paris are abundantly equipped with bathrooms now, but the Parisian boulevardiers continue to look with darkling suspicion on a party who will deliberately immerse his person in cold water; their beings seem to recoil in horror from the bare prospect of such a thing. It is plainly to be seen they think his intelligence has been attainted by ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... that world which the mass of men are in a conspiracy to ignore and forget. And just as the sleeper is unconscious of all around him in his chamber, and of all the stir and beauty of the world in which he lives, so the bulk of us go blind and darkling through life, absorbed in the things seen, and never lift even a momentary and lack-lustre glance to the august realities which lie behind these, and give them all their significance ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... Arthur knew the voice; the face Wellnigh was helmet-hidden, and the name Went wandering somewhere darkling in his mind. And Arthur deign'd not use of word or sword, But let the drunkard, as he stretch'd from horse To strike him, overbalancing his bulk, Down from the causeway heavily to the swamp Fall, ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... soon As e'er they heard of bands at Doune?— Like bloodhounds now they search me out,— Hark, to the whistle and the shout!— If farther through the wilds I go, I only fall upon the foe: I'll couch me here till evening gray, Then darkling ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... walked on together, side by side, through leafy byways and winding paths, past smiling cornfield and darkling wood; we talked of the Government, of country and town, of the Fashionable World and its most famous denizens, concerning which last my companion's knowledge seemed profound; we spoke but little of books, of which he seemed ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... hawk in the skies higher yet. Leaves floated in a still, deep pool, were caught in a maddening eddy, and hurried frantically away, unwilling, frenzied, helpless, unknowing whither, never to return,—allegory of many a life outside those darkling solemn mountain woods, and of some, perhaps, in the midst of them. The reflection of the cliffs in the never still current, of the pines on their summits, of the changing sky growing deeper and deeper, till its amber tint, erstwhile so crystalline, ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... visible to us for a moment, when their orbit passes into the lighted heavens, and then they disappear in the shadow of the earth. But astronomers tell us that they are always there though to us they seem to blaze but for a moment. We cannot see them, but they move on their darkling path and have a sun round which they circle. So be sure that in many heathen lands there are believing souls, seen by us but for an instant and then lost, who yet fill their unseen place, and move obedient round the Sun of Righteousness. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... to some dark spot on the northern slopes, where there would be no city watchman or late passer-by to give the alarm, and all would be clear and still before them to the water's edge—though a long, weary, and darkling way. ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... hull floating up out of the hollow and flinging a wet orange gleam to the west, a tumble of creamy foam about her to her rolling, shadows like the passage of phantom hands hurrying over her sails to the swaying of her masts, and the swelling sea darkling ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... wax tapers first used in Saturn's temple of old lit up the street like magic and the last game of all began, for every man and woman and child strove to put out another's candle, and the long, laughing cry, 'No taper! No taper! Senza moccolo!' went ringing up to the darkling sky. Long canes with cloths or damp sponges or extinguishers fixed to them started up from nowhere, down from everywhere, from window and balcony to the street below, and from the street to the low balconies above. ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... conforming souls Mrs. Nitschkan cast a darkling eye. It was the recalcitrant, the defiant, the professing sinner upon whom she concentrated ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... years—'tis a thundering shame, Ma'am! High time the Young Spark put a term to his wrong. Just look at me! Am I not trim, smart, and sparkling, As clean as a pin, and as bright as a star? Compare me with him, who stands scowling and darkling! So gazed the old gallant on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... the lights in the farm-house. He heard the two Wrinkles, with cracked voices, singing a hymn as they sat in their rocking-chairs on the porch. The very stars seemed to hang lower from the darkling mystery overhead; he felt light enough, in his boundless content, to rise to them and drink at their twinkling founts. His soul seemed to swell to the point of bursting. "Oh, God, I thank Thee!" he said, deep within himself. ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... recalled that he had done dread things; he became a tradition, a legend, and a warning to the young; a Richard in the bush to frighten colts. He was preached at boys caught playing marbles "for keeps": "Do you want to grow up like Joe Louden?" The very name became a darkling threat, and children of the town would have run had one called suddenly, "HERE COMES JOE LOUDEN!" Thus does the evil men do live after them, and the ill-fame of the unrighteous ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... rocks. Darkling and indistinct they loomed up out of the white opaque light. As the children approached they almost bumped against them. They rose up like walls and were quite perpendicular so that scarcely a flake of snow ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... gloomy Vaulted abysses! Tenderer, clearer, Friendlier, nearer, Ether, look through! O that the darkling Cloud-piles were riven! Starlight is sparkling, Purer is heaven, Holier sunshine Softens the blue. Graces, adorning Sons of the morning— Shadowy wavings— Float along over; Yearnings and cravings After them hover. Garments ethereal, Tresses aerial, Float o'er the flowers, ...
— Faust • Goethe
... not what it means: And I was fearful even of clouds that drive Across the dawn, and die—of all, of nought - Winds whispering on the darkling ways of thought, Sunbeams that flash like fire, and hopes like fears That slay themselves, and live again, and die. But in mine eyes thy light is, in mine ears Thy music: I am thine, and more than I, Being half ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... river—bluffs of wild majesty worn into varied outlines, as though a mighty torrent had once surged between them, forcing the very rocks to crumble before its headlong career. But now only a gentle stream wandered through the broad bed, here shallow over the sand, there darkling in a still pool, now making a green willow-shaded island, and now a deep rock-bordered channel, doing its best with the various graceful devices of a happy little stream to compensate for the absence of the river, to whose ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... see The raindrops flaming goldenly On the stream's eddies overhead And dragonflies with drops of red In the crisp surface of each wing Threading slant rains that flash and sing, Or under the water-lily's cup, From darkling depths, roll slowly up The bronze flanks of an ancient bream Into the hot sun's shattered beam, Or over a sunk tree's bubbled hole The perch stream in a golden shoal: Come, ye sorrowful; our deep Holds ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... damsel and rideth until the sun was set. He found the rocks darkling and the forest right deep and perilous of seeming. He rode on, troubled in thought, and weary and full of vexation. Many a time Looketh he to right and to left, and he may see any place where he may lodge. A dwarf espied him, but Lancelot saw ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... best know, love best, And best of all souls understand The very soul of freedom, scanned Far off, sought out in darkling quest By men at ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... gossiped as well as I could of this and that. All the time the strangeness of him was shaping itself in my mind; and as I talked I peered at his odd, pallid face in the dim light of the binnacle lantern behind me. Then I looked out at the darkling sea, where in the dimness his little ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... with her, but a little love-song Elizabeth had learned from Robert Burrell. Her foot had that spring to its lift and fall that shows there is a young innocent heart above it. In and out among the glades she went, almost as brightly and musically as the brook whose sparkling and darkling course she followed. When but a few hundred yards down the path, someone called her. She thought it was a fancy and went onward, nevertheless feeling a sudden silence and trouble. Immediately she heard footsteps and the rustling swish ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... overthrown table was in front of them, and one leapt upon its edge, but as he leapt, the old knight, all his years and sickness forgotten now, sprang forward and struck downwards, so heavy a blow that in the darkling mouth of the passage the sparks streamed out, and where the Saracen's head had been, appeared his heels. Back Sir Andrew stepped again to win space for his sword-play, while round the ends of the table broke two fierce-faced men. At one of them Rosamund ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... me the scenes that followed. Darkling, I passed again through the station called Sybaris, and on and on by the sea-shore, the sound of breakers often audible. From time to time I discerned black mountain masses against a patch of grey sky, or caught a glimpse of blanching wave, or felt my fancy thrill as a stray gleam ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... tresses of green-haired water-weed. The copse was green under foot, full of fresh, uncrumpling leaves. He sat down beside the pool; the silence of the wide fields was broken only by the faint rustling of sedge and tree, and the piping of a bird, hid in some darkling bush hard by. Never had Hugh been more conscious of the genial outburst of life all about him, yet never more aware of his isolation from it all. His body seemed to belong to it all, swayed and governed by the same laws that prompted their gentle motions ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... son, who slipp'd away from her To meet with Mall my sister in a place, Where I appointed; and my mother too Seeks for my sister; so they both are gone: My mother hath a torch; marry, your wife Goes darkling up and down, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... a sad darkling Calvary on the edge of the harvest-field that looked black against the blue sky; its shadow fell across the road, but she did not see it: she was looking ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... twigged manzanita, lilac, laurel and mahogany that broke upward along the shining bouldered coasts of San Jacinto. the chaparral at this season took all the changes of the incoming surf, blue in the shadows, darkling green about the heads of the gulches, or riffling with the white under side of wind-lifted leaves. Once its murmurous swell had closed over them, the mule-deer would have his own way with the Pot ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... issued, scarce sure which. High overhead Giotto's tower soared; Behind, the Duomo rose all white and black; Then pealed a sudden jargoning of bells, And down the darkling street I wildly fled, Led by a little, cold, and wandering moon, Which seemed as lonely and as lost as I. I had no aim, save to reach warmth and light And human touch; but still my witless steps Led to my husband's door, and ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long That it had it head bit off by it young. So out went the candle, and we were left darkling. ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... made an opaque belt of shadow on the darkling glassy shimmer of the sea. But I saw at once something elongated and pale floating very close to the ladder. Before I could form a guess a faint flash of phosphorescent light, which seemed to issue suddenly from the naked body of ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... substantial world, could mark the keen sympathies and near associations, and all the essences which fill up the apparent gaps between being and being, we should see, undoubtedly, that these things are most natural, and wonder at the blindness with which we have walked in darkling ignorance through the thronged ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... me spend a night with Uncle Eb in the shanty, and I was to sleep on the robes, where he would be beside me when he was not tending the fire. It had been a mild, bright day, and David came up with our supper at sunset. He sat talking with Uncle Eb for an hour or so, and the woods were darkling when he went away. ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... tower of darkling chance Or dungeon of a narrow doom, Dream'st thou of battle-axe and lance That for the cross make crashing room? Come! with strained eyes the battle waits In the wild van thy mace's swing; While doubters parley with their fates, Make thou thine own ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... darkling sweep of desert had been transformed. It was now a world of red earth and gold rocks and purple sage, with everywhere the endless straggling green cedars. A breeze whipped in, making the fire roar softly. ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... public affairs, into which the late student entered with all his heart and soul; and then last of all he cast the veil of a divine darkness over him, sent him into a chamber far more retired than that in which he laboured at Cambridge, and set him like the nightingale to sing darkling. The blackness about him was just the great canvas which God gave him to cover with forms of light and music. Deep wells of memory burst upwards from below; the windows of heaven were opened from above; from both rushed ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... be fired on. Yet yielding to her prayer, he let her go, Giving her all he could, letters to Gates, And for her use an open boat. Thus she set forth, with Chaplain Brudenell For escort, her maid, and the poor Major's man— Thus was she rowed adown the darkling stream. Night fell before they reached the enemy's posts, And all in vain they raised the flag of truce, The sentry would not even let them land, But kept them there, all in the dark and cold, Threatening to fire upon them if they stirred Before the break ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... soft as farthest skies That hold horizon rain; Or when, steel-darkling, stoic-wise, They bring the ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... your ears hopelessly sealed, your minds immutably earthen?' Grail—Oh yes, Grail had the right intelligence in his eyes; but Ackroyd, but Bunce? Ackroyd thought of the meaning of the words; no more. Poor Bunce had darkling throes of mind, but struggled with desperate nervousness and could not be at ease till the straightforward talk began again. And Bower?—Nay, there goes more to this matter than mere enthusiasm in a teacher. ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... Black in blackness, In all their leaves there is no sigh. 'Neath that darkling Cedar who dare wander Now, or under ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... as the world I should foreknow Up into which I was about to rise— Its rains, its radiance, airs, and warmth, and skies, How it would greet me, how its wind would blow— As little, it may be, I do know the good Which I for years half darkling have pursued— The second birth ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... were God's first temples. Ere man learned To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, And spread the roof above them—ere he framed The lofty vault, to gather and roll back The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood, Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down, And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks And supplication. For his simple heart Might not resist the sacred influences Which, from the stilly twilight of the place, And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven Mingled their ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... And, turning, meet the self-same waste again— The same drear wilderness of stern decay; Its former pride, the phantom of a day; A song of summer-birds within a bower; A dream of beauty traced upon a flower; A lute whose master-chord has ceased to sound; A morning-star struck darkling to ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... rough mountain where I stood, Homesick for happiness, Only a narrow valley and a darkling wood To cross, and then the long distress Of solitude would be forever past,— I should be home at last. But not too soon! oh, let me linger here And feed my eyes, hungry with sorrow, On all this loveliness, so ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke
... baling with renewed zest. "Nevertheless," he continued, "it will be well to keep her afloat as long as we may, since she affords a bigger mark to steer for than would the heads of us two afloat upon the darkling water." ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... gleaming with statues, and bright with a hundred thousand flowers; of the bridges and shining fountains and rivers wherein the castle windows reflect their festive gleams, when the halls are filled with happy feasters, and over the darkling woods comes the sound of music;—always, I say, when I think of Castle Bluebeard:—it is to think of that dark little closet, which I know is there, and which the lordly owner opens shuddering—after midnight—when he is sleepless and must go unlock it, when the palace is hushed, when ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... now it guarded shrewd Ulysses' brows. 320 Both clad in arms terrific, forth they sped, Leaving their fellow Chiefs, and as they went A heron, by command of Pallas, flew Close on the right beside them; darkling they Discern'd him not, but heard his clanging plumes.[11] 325 Ulysses in the favorable sign Exulted, and Minerva thus invoked.[12] Oh hear me, daughter of Jove AEgis-arm'd! My present helper in all straits, whose eye Marks all my ways, oh with peculiar care 330 Now ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... Love's endangered state, Wrought by keen anguish mad, I struck at fate, Prostrating mockingly in sport or hate The aspirations, darkling, we Cherish and resolve ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... all determinable colour. These I reserved to take an early opportunity of reading, but replaced for the present, and, having come at last upon one hopeful-looking key, I made haste to return before my candle, which was already flickering in the socket, should go out altogether, and leave me darkling. When I reached the kitchen, however, I found the grey dawn already breaking. I retired once more to my chamber, and was ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... morning while they were dressing me. It's like a hole in this infernal phantom world. Just put your hand by mine. No—not there. Ah! Yes! I see it. The base of your thumb and a bit of cuff! It looks like the ghost of a bit of your hand sticking out of the darkling sky. Just by it there's a group of stars like a cross ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... again. Her bitter remorse, her afterthoughts of perplexity had been lulled in the long calm of the respite, and when roused again, even by this sudden sorrow, she woke to her old trust and hope. And when she listened to the expressive though calm rehearsal of that solemn sunrise-greeting to the weary darkling fishers on the shore of the mountain lake, it was to her as if the form so long hidden from her by mists of her own raising, once more shone forth, smoothing the vexed waters of her soul, and she could say with a new thrill of recognition, "It ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have rung it. I beg you will not mention it where my parents may hear of it, for they are old and feeble, and such a seemingly wanton breach of the hallowed conventionalities of our Christian civilization might all too rudely sunder the frail bridge which hangs darkling between the pale and evanescent present and the solemn great deeps of the eternities. May I trouble ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... mounting Sheer through air made shrill with strokes of smooth swift wings Round the rocks beyond foot's reach, past eyesight's counting, Up the cleft where iron wind of winter rings Round a God fast clenched in iron jaws of fetters, Him who culled for man the fruitful flower of fire, Bared the darkling scriptures writ in dazzling letters, Taught the truth of dreams deceiving men's desire, Gave their water-wandering chariot-seats of ocean Wings, and bade the rage of war-steeds champ the rein, Showed the symbols ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne |
