"Sightless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sufficient to show that we were standing amongst the ropes of the mortuary marquee. The man struck another match to show us the way in. We entered and added our burden to a double row of other dead, who lay there in the flickering match-light staring at the roof with sightless eyes and ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... hidden in the lap of Night, sightless, forlorn wanderers. They move in darkness, unseeing and unseen, though smitten by the ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer
... hot light, was as repugnant an object as the lizards in the neighboring swamp, and promised to be of as little use to his master. He was of the lowest negro type, from which only field-hands can be made,—coal-black, with protruding heels, the ape-jaw, blubber-lips constantly open, the sightless eyes closed, and the head thrown far back on the shoulders, lying on the back, in fact, a habit which he still retains, and which adds to the imbecile character of the face. Until he was seven years of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... to end my days sightless, Mary, I knew I could not come to you again; but Heaven has willed it otherwise. It has been a long, long waiting, hopeless till within the last month, and it was only within the past few days that the doctor told me that all was safe, and ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn
... races. Yet intellect was all he was. Vast areas of thought, feeling, and conduct, in which the people around him spent so much of their time, were entirely closed to him. He had no personal life at all. That part of him had atrophied from lack of use, like the eyes of the mole and of those sightless fishes men take from the waters ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... bound in fetters of steel. In all his after life he was not to forget the picture of that hideous figure, sitting there in the tomb-like grey. The face was bloated and soft and flabby, beardless and putty-like; the lips thick and colourless; the eyes wide, sightless and glassy. The black hair was matted and plastered close to the skull, as if it had just come from the water. The clothes that covered the corpse were wet, slimy and reeking with the odour of stagnant water. Huge, ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... form The sightless orbs would seek, And smiles of welcome light and warm The lips that could ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... bliss, thou cause of woe, Disturber of the mind of man, Wilt thou still calmly onward go, A sightless leader of the van? ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... walker who loved to ramble alone, could barely grope his way about; all that was left to him of sight was the ability to recognise well-known figures standing in a strong light. Yet he still continued to preach; standing grey and sightless in the pulpit, uttering what words (perforce unstudied) came to his lips. Himself in his sorrowful age and stern endurance a most noble ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... sorrow to joy; to sit beside the dying, and talk of the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world; to wipe the dampness of death from their brows, listen to their last words, and, when the spirit had flown, to close the sightless eyes, and cut from the pale brow a lock of hair for a fond mother far away, thinking ever of ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... sightless eyes, And for this unrequited toil, For fraud, injustice, perjuries, For lords whose greed devours the soil, And ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... of the room, hearing herself repeat "You mustn't, you mustn't" as if it were somebody else screaming. She came to a chair and flung herself into it. Thereupon the somebody else ceased screaming and she lolled, exhausted, sightless, in a silent room, as if indifferent to everything and without a ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... forward everything seemed to remind her of her affliction, and she heard its baneful voice at all times. Even her dreams, though they had no visions, were full of voices that told of them. If a bird sang in the air above her, she lifted her sightless eyes. If she walked in the town on market morning and heard the din of traffic—the cries of the dealers, the "Balak!" of the camel-men, the "Arrah!" of the muleteers, and the twanging ginbri of the story-tellers—she sighed and dropped her ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... bloodstained, dishevelled. He was at his brother's side as he had been a dozen times during his mad search. It was as though he returned to the dead for company. But now, at last, he moved away no more. He looked upon the pallid face and staring, sightless eyes, and the red pool in ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... apparently staring out into the distance, his sightless eyes wide with the peculiar blank pathos of the blind. The Leopard Woman's own eyes were ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... is one of their fables: — The kangaroo was originally blind, and could only walk or crawl. The frog seeing it so much at the mercy of its enemies, took compassion on it, and anointed the sightless eyeballs of the kangaroo with its saliva, and told it to hop as he did. The kangaroo did so, and is now become the most difficult animal in ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... Keen human legislation! sightless justice of men!—one drunken wretch smites another in a midnight brawl, and sends a soul to its account with one sharp shudder of passion and despair, and the maddened creature that remains on earth suffers the penalty of the law. Every sense sobered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... remembers in the Fourth Book of the immortal poem of your Blind Bard, (to whose sightless orbs no doubt Glorious Shapes were apparent, and Visions Celestial,) how Adam discourses to Eve of the Bright Visitors who hovered ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in a distinct narrative tone of voice, which he raised and depressed with considerable skill; at times sinking almost into a whisper, and turning his clear but sightless eyeballs upon my face, as if it had been possible for him to witness the impression which his narrative made upon my features. I will not spare a syllable of it, although it be of the longest; so ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... sudden, overwhelming pity, her arms reached out again to Lily. As she gathered the child close she was surprised at the slenderness of the tiny figure, at the neatness of the faded gingham frock that blended in tone with the great, sightless eyes. All at once she remembered what Bennie had said to her, the day ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... brought forgetfulness before their feet grow icy with the first step into the dark water. To meet on Lethe-side is to meet, maybe; but with a sad unrecognising meeting. To lie together in oblivion, with sightless eyes, and dulled hearts and listless hands,—that was not ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... floated sightless, nor did know That I had ears until I heard the cry As of a mighty man in agony: "How long, Lord, shall I lie thus foul and slow? The arrows of thy lightning through me go, And sting and torture me—yet here I lie A shapeless mass that scarce can mould a sigh." The darkness thinned; ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... a mightless, And the strong men laughed and roared: "Is our father Odin sightless That bade him share ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... still leading him by the hand, like a child. Like a child, or rather like a blind man, he sat down in the chair which she placed for him. His eyes did not move from her face; but they looked almost like sightless eyes. Hetty stood before him, with her hands clasped tight. Neither spoke. At last Dr. ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... time. A group of hatless women stood haranguing on the Mairie steps; a good-looking girl, wearing high heels and bangles, unloaded a barrow-load of household goods into a van the Maire had provided, and hastened home with the barrow to fill it again; a sweet-faced old dame, sightless, bent with rheumatism, pathetic in her helpless resignation, sat on a wicker-chair outside her doorway, waiting for a farm cart to take her away: by her side, a wide-eyed solemn-faced little girl, dressed in her Sunday best, and ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... clawing ceased, the bull raised his gory, sightless head, and with a horrid roar ran headlong across the arena. With great leaps and bounds he came, straight toward the arena wall directly beneath where we sat, and then accident carried him, in one of his mighty springs, ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... thus his eager appetite for knowledge and information of all kinds was severely balked. He continued to preach. I have heard that he was led up into the pulpit, and that his sermons were never so effective as when he stood there, a grey sightless old man, his blind eyes looking out straight before him, while the words that came from his lips had all the vigour and force of his best days. Another fact has been mentioned to me, curious as showing the accurateness of his sensation ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... bushy trees shooting out of the cliff above and around them. I went up to the one pointed out to me, and there, lying on a heap of rags, was Susette's little blind sister, that she has often talked to you about. Dear little patient thing! turning her large, dark, sightless eyes towards me with such a bright smile! As she spoke of "le bon Dieu," I thought of the pretty French hymns you used to try to learn, and it gave the soft French words a softer sound when they were on such a happy theme. But we could not ...
— My Young Days • Anonymous
... and worn out, a useless Man; Kindly have you protected me to-night, And no return have I to make but prayers; May you in age be blest with such a daughter!— When from the Holy Land I had returned Sightless, and from my heritage was driven, A wretched Outcast—but this strain of thought Would ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... winged soul in a new hell; Lest it be you, lip-worshippers of Truth, Who break the heart of youth; Lest it be you, the realists, who fight With shadows, and forget your own pure light; Lest it be you who, with a little shroud Snatched from the sightless faces of the dead, Hoodwink the world, and keep the mourner bowed In dust, real dust, with stones, real stones, for bread; Lest, as you look one eighth of an inch beneath The yellow skin of death, You dream yourselves discoverers of the skull ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... lofty ceiling. No sooner had it commenced than the eyes of all were fixed in terror upon the dying man. Novikoff, standing nearest to him, thought that Semenoff's eye-lids moved slightly, as if the sightless eyeballs had been turned in the direction of the chanting. To the others, however, Semenoff appeared as strangely motionless ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... cried 'Here am I, husband! The lost lamb returned, All re-baptized in blood!' and you said, 'Come! Come to thy bride-bed, martyr, wife once more!' From that same moment all my pain was gone; And ever since those sightless eyes have smiled Love—love! Alas, those eyes! They made me fall. I could not bear to see them, bleeding, dark, Never, no never to look into mine; Never to watch me round the little room Singing about my work, or flash ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... live, which seems impossible. She looks like a galvanized corpse—yet must have been a good-looking child. Notwithstanding the nature of her wound, her reason has not gone, and as she sat upright in her little bed, with her head bandaged, and her fixed and sightless eyes, she answered meekly and readily to all the questions we put to her. Poor little thing! she was shocking to look at; one of the many innocent beings whose lives are to be rendered sad and joyless by this revolution. The doctor seemed ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... game in the valley. In its centre was a solitary lake, black and bottomless, and haunted by a giant white water-snake, sluggish, blind and very old. Stray prospectors swore they had seen it, just at dusk, and its sightless, staring eyes were ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... out dead man lay on the floor, his dark face twisted up, his sightless eyes staring at the ceiling, his temple crushed as with a hammer. Clutched tight in one stiff hand was an automatic. On his chest ...
— A Scientist Rises • Desmond Winter Hall
... Lemminkainen, Sang the foemen with their broadswords? Sang the heroes with their weapons, Sang the eldest, sang the youngest, Sang the middle-aged, enchanted; Only one he left his senses, He a poor, defenseless shepherd, Old and sightless, halt and wretched, And the old man's name was Nasshut. Spake the miserable shepherd: "Thou hast old and young enchanted, Thou hast banished all our heroes, Why hast spared this wretched shepherd?" This is Lemminkainen's answer: "Therefore have I not bewitched thee: Thou art ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... talk easy generalities about the intuition of children! As a matter of fact, the little ones are not above judging quite as superficially and falsely as their elders. The child looked at her protector's sightless eye, then turned away and sidled over to McWha with one hand coaxingly outstretched. McWha's mouth twisted sourly. Without appearing to see the tiny hand, he deftly evaded it. Stooping over the dead man, he picked him up, straightened him out ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... of Father Feral while I was going, but it was nothing to what I saw when I entered his room. The poor old man, blind and bald, was sitting in an arm-chair behind the stove, his head bowed upon his breast, and his sightless eyes open, and staring as if he saw his three sons stretched at his feet. He did not speak, but great drops of sweat rolled down his forehead on his long, thin cheeks, while his face was pale as that of a corpse. Four or five of his old comrades of the times of ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... turned slowly in his chair and bent his sightless gaze upon his son. "Well, well," he ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... just probed the ulcer on the hip, and said the bone was carious 193:6 for several inches. He even showed me the probe, which had on it the evidence of this condition of the bone. The doctor went out. Mr. Clark lay with his eyes fixed and 193:9 sightless. The dew of death was on his brow. I went to his bedside. In a few moments his face changed; its death-pallor gave place to a natural hue. The eyelids 193:12 closed gently and the breathing became natural; he was asleep. In about ten ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... excessive thuds of horror against her breast. The face above her seemed carved in stone, pale, bloodless, calm; it was set, as the girl realised in a moment of terror and agony, in a repose that would never be broken. The large, dark eyes, still open, gazed past her, sightless, changeless. Fear, her fear of him, her awe, her oppressed terror fell from her, giving way to an infinite regret, a sorrow, a sense of loss that rushed over her, filling every cell, every atom of ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... Preacher saith, "Like as the grass that withereth." The late, close blades still waved around: I clutched a handful from the ground. "He mocks us cruelly," I said: "The frail herb lives, and she is dead." I lay dumb, sightless, deaf as she; The long slow hours passed over me. I saw Grief face to face; I know The very form and traits of Woe. I drained the galled dregs of the draught She offered me: I could have laughed In irony of sheer despair, Although I could not weep. The air ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... and rhythmic regularity, a step and a blow, from one end of the long barn to the other. The half-blind thresher could see the outline of the open door against the sunlight, and his steps and voice guided his sightless fellow-worker. Thus healthful and useful employment was given to two stricken waifs through the use of primitive methods, which no modern machine could ever have afforded; and the blue sky and bay, with autumnal sunshine on the ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... cutting Sholto was left whining on the platform, and it was as much as Angus could do to hold him back. Poor Sholto; he was a faithful beast, and they were taking his beloved mistress away from him. Myra sat back in the carriage, and furtively wiped away a tear from her poor sightless eyes. ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... fists contacting soft flesh, and the pained cry, swiftly suppressed, of Janith. His voice, cursing and high-pitched, as he fought the straps that now were restraining his sightless body. The bite of a needle ...
— Second Sight • Basil Eugene Wells
... 1) Wast thou then sightless from thy birth? Evil, methinks, and long Thy pilgrimage on earth. Yet add not curse to curse and wrong to wrong. I warn thee, trespass not Within this hallowed spot, Lest thou shouldst find the silent grassy glade Where offerings ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... boldly, covering the ground at a speed which was itself a luxury to one so long cut off from that joie de vivre of a strong man. And more, it brought a smile to one's soul to see the joy of victory flashing in the features of the upturned face—the triumph of the man over the pitifulness of his sightless eyes. The international dual alliance was making its debut on the field. The firm of Karlek and Moreau, Eskimo and ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... transform this discredited goddess into an evil being whose one function was the destruction of souls. May we see a relation of the Korrigan and Keridwen in Tridwan, or St Triduana, of Restalrig, near Edinburgh, who presided over a certain well there, and at whose well-shrine offerings were made by sightless pilgrims ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... throbbing, his failing senses were suddenly and momentarily aroused, and the curdling blood sent again with quickened impulse through his veins, as his dull ears were saluted with the horrible sound of the howlings of wild beasts in the distance; and the last things that his closing, almost sightless balls beheld were the glaring eyes of the monsters of the forest, as ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... to come back to those sightless eyes, and with a purr, as if it understood, the great cat leaped lightly on to the table and sat before De Mouchy, whilst the latter put one finger on ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... of approach: the closet-door folded back, and in glided, open-eyed, but sightless pale as death, and clad in white, ghostly-pure and saint-like, the Lady Alice. I shuddered from head to foot at what I had done. She was more terrible to me in that moment than any pale-eyed ghost ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... where the sleeves of the ferioul terminate; his under limbs were short in comparison with his body and arms; his legs were bare, but he wore blue kandrisa as far as the knee; every features of his face was ugly, exceedingly and bitterly ugly, and one of his eyes was sightless, being covered with a white film. By his side on the ground was a large barrel, seemingly a water-cask, which he occasionally seized with a finger and thumb, and waved over his head as if it had been a quart pot. Such was the trio who now occupied the wustuddur of Joanna Correa: and ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... were better obtainable in Paris. Antoine looked down upon this wreck of his son that lay before him, and the wreck, not appreciating that he was a surgical triumph, kept sobbing, kept weeping out of his sightless eyes, kept jerking his four stumps in supplication, kept ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... fun, Maren had only to say: "You're not playing tricks, are you, child?" and she would immediately stop. She was intelligent and quick, and Maren could wish for no better eyes than hers, failing the use of her own. There she would sit fumbling and turning her sightless eyes towards every sound without discovering what it could be. But thanks to Ditte she was able by degrees to take up part of her old ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... from the mountains the chill knowledge of death wailed through the window, and over the heads of the crowd. All the figures were upright now in the little room. Then those outside saw Laura Sloly lean over and close the sightless eyes. This done, she came to the door and opened it, and motioned for the Healer to leave. He hesitated, hearing the harsh murmur from the outskirts of the crowd. Once again she motioned, and he came. With a face deadly pale she ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in his great office, that his virtues Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against The deep damnation of his taking-off; And pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself, ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... over, during which the sightless eyeballs of the singer had been turned up towards the rafters of the cottage—a sign surely that the germ of light, "the sunny seed," as Henry Vaughan calls it, must be in him, else why should he lift ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... soft-handed depth subdues Drowned colour there, but black to hues, As death to living, decomposes — Red darkness of the heart of roses, Blue brilliant from dead starless skies, And gold that lies behind the eyes, The unknown unnameable sightless white That is the essential flame of night, Lustreless purple, hooded green, The myriad hues that lie between Darkness ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... and his light as shining in darkness that comprehended it not. Now, he may have conceived of matter as uncreated, eternally existing in formless night, the ground of the devil's being, and may have limited the work of creation to breaking up the sightless chaos, defining it into orderly shapes, filling it with light and motion, and peopling it with children of heaven. Such was the Persian faith, familiar at that time to the Jews. Neander, with others, objects to this view that it would destroy John's monotheism ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... mouse had contracted a sort of friendly sympathy for the hoary-headed, sightless Royal maniac, and paid him such frequent visits, during his long captivity, that it was at length become quite tame, and would submit to be handled by the unfortunate shadow of a great monarch. The King was very much delighted with this friendly little visitant, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... who ever sat under the ministrations of Dr. Milburn, the blind chaplain, can ever forget his earnest and solemn invocation. When rolling from his tongue, each word of the Lord's Prayer seemed to weigh a pound. His venerable appearance and sightless eyes gave a tinge of pathetic emphasis to his every utterance. He was a man of rare gifts; in early life, before the entire failure of his sight, he had known much of active service in his sacred calling upon the Western circuits. He had been the fellow-laborer of Cartwright, Bascom, and ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... shrivelled face, with prominent cheekbones and bushy white eyebrows, betokened the possession, in earlier days, of a most masculine expression of features. Her hair, white as snow, was gathered back from her forehead, under a spreading plain white cap; and her sightless eyes, wide open, stared forward with a startling and somewhat sinister expression. She was wrapped round in a clean white bedgown; and her long thin arms lay straight before her on the outside of the bedclothes. Her lips were moving, as if she were ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... tears flow from those sightless orbs, As light breaks in upon his darker soul, Prospect of death his wretched thoughts absorbs, And makes him wish that he could back recall, Those early years which did so fleetly roll, Before he lost his ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... months. "It means," he said, "that they want to take our young men away to fight. It is not right. The young men should not fight." Then putting his hand in his pocket he drew out a little silver cross that had been given him some years before when he had been confirmed, and holding it up as if his sightless eyes could see it he said, "That's good. That means that men should not fight, ...
— Hidden from the Prudent - The 7th William Penn Lecture, May 8, 1921 • Paul Jones
... Lionel was horribly shocked and disappointed. Was this, then, his trophy that he hoped to have hung up for the admiration of his friends and his own ecstatic contemplation—this twisted, shapeless, sightless lump of hide and hair, with a great jaw of discolored teeth gleaming from under its flabby folds? It is true that here were the identical horns, for had he not gone lovingly over every tine of them?—but was this rag of a thing all ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... had risen high enough to illuminate the whole front as Adams climbed the broad, massive steps to the paved space before it. Leaning against the heavy balustrade he enjoyed the picture. The shadows were deep and through the sightless windows shone a few silver stars. The magnificent front of solid granite with graceful scroll-work and carved outline, blackened here by smoke and there by age, with vines and trees growing from ...
— In Macao • Charles A. Gunnison
... dusk they had taken a rather long walk together, and for a short cut homeward passed through the shrubberies of Hintock House—still deserted, and still blankly confronting with its sightless shuttered windows the surrounding foliage and slopes. Grace was tired, and they approached the wall, and sat together on one of the stone sills—still warm with the sun that had been pouring its rays ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... the stern, the fell, Midst the uproar of shriek and shout Stung tho Greek emperor's eyes both out: The Norse king's mark will not adorn, The Norse king's mark gives cause to mourn; His mark the Eastern king must bear, Groping his sightless way ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... denied, and derided; justice rebuked; treachery applauded; traitors canonized; anarchy inaugurated; monarchy calculating the end of republicanism; and the wheels of government clogged by the minions of despotism! All this, my Countrymen, and you passive, silent, sightless; reckless of your own and your children's doom? And while all this is true, you go about your usual avocations, as though the eyes of the civilized world were not upon you; as though the great, the good, the magnanimous ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... while that of the girl was fresh and rosy. Nevertheless, that blank expression upon her face, and the fact that her companion had linked his arm in hers, both pointed to the fact that either her vision was dim, or her great dark eyes were actually sightless. The man was fairly well dressed, but the girl was very shabby. Her rusty black, her cheap stockings, her down-at-heel shoes, and her faded hat combined to present a picture of poverty. Indeed, the very ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... Milton if he could have acquiesced in an ever so needful Henry Cromwell or Charles Stuart. Never quick to detect the course of public opinion, he was now still further disabled by his blindness. There is great pathos in the thought of the sightless patriot hungering for tidings, "as the Red Sea for ghosts," and swayed hither and thither by the narratives and comments of passionate or interested reporters. At last something occurred which none could misunderstand or misrepresent. ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... still cheering and shouting as they advanced upon the Palace, and the noise of their coming drove the people indoors, so that they marched through deserted streets and between closed doors and sightless windows. No one opposed them, and no one encouraged them. But they could now see the facade of the Palace and the flag of the Revolutionists hanging from the mast in front ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... on board but he obtained little information. And yet he could not be content. It became a regular thing for Vivian to be seen, day after day, in the shipowners' offices, at Lloyd's, at the docks, asking eagerly for news, or, more frequently, turning his sightless eyes and anxious face from one desk to another, as the careless comments of the clerks upon his errand fell upon his ear. Sometimes his secretary came with him: sometimes, but, more seldom, a lady. For Angela was living with him now, and ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... her basket again upon her arm, turned to give one last look of fiendish satisfaction at the corpse, which lay like a dead angel slain in God's battle. The bright lamps were glaring full upon her still beautiful but sightless eyes, which, wide open, looked, even in death, reproachfully ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... which gave light to humanity, and which was seen every day to flame in the heavens without ever losing its brilliance or becoming weaker. When he hides himself "the world rests in darkness, like those dead who lie in their rock-tombs, with their heads swathed, their nostrils stuffed up, their eyes sightless, and whose whole property might be stolen from them, even that which they have under their head, without their knowing it; the lion issues from his lair, the serpent roams ready to bite, it is as obscure ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... evidently felt very humble in the presence of those who had taken part in the more famous campaigns under Napoleon himself. The history of another of my old soldiers was pathetic. He was led daily into the cabaret, where my guests were wont to fight their battles o'er again, his eyes absolutely sightless, and his hair as white as snow. Getting into conversation with him I learned that he had gone to Egypt with Bonaparte, had fought at the Battle of the Pyramids, had been blinded by the glaring sun on the ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... man, scared by his threats, started to walk away in the slow, halting way of the sightless, and attracted Great Night Moth's attention. He picked up his new gun and while all were petrified with fear of being the target, he shot the blind man so that his body fell into the oven in which the pig had been baked. The people could only ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... him taken to her studio, where she would play with and fondle the enormous creature as if he were a kitten. And there, at last, he died happily, his great paws clinging fondly to the mistress who loved him so well, his sightless eyes turned upon her to the end, as if beseeching that she would not ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... it seemed that eyes such as his had become must needs be sightless the latter went on picking his way carefully over rough bits of going; when he had reached a condition where he no longer heard the word or two which, now and then, Steve addressed to him, he still flattened his body ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... darkness on danger. "Let Ajax perish in the face of day." Who has not shuddered over the description of that Arkansas duel, fought by two naked combatants, with pistol and bowie-knife, in a dark room? One thrills to think of those first few moments of breathless, sightless, hopeless, hushed expectation, —then the confused encounter, the slippery floor, the invisible, ghastly terrors of that horrible chamber. Many a man would shrink from that, who would march coolly up to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... the evil of human servitude? Has it sapped the foundations of the infamous system? No. Has it decreased the number of its victims? Quite the contrary. Unaccompanied by philanthropic action, it has been in a moral point of view worthless, a thing without vitality, sightless, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... rose in all their freshness, as by a subtle conspiracy, yet blind to the world about them, conscious only of the sunlight and the rain, with no imaginative knowledge, it would seem, or sympathy with their brethren. It always filled Hugh with a sort of pity to think of the sightless life of trees and flowers, each rising in its place, in plain, on hill, and yet each enclosed within itself, with no consciousness of its own beauty, and still less conscious of the beauty of its fellows. And what was the life that animated them? Where did it come from? Where did it pass ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... wheat that frets the sky, Gold of plenty and blue of hope, I'm seeing it all with an inner eye As out of the door I grope and grope. And I hear my wife and her lover there, Whispering, whispering, round the rick, Mocking me and my sightless stare, As I fumble and stumble everywhere, Slapping and tapping with my stick; Old and weary at thirty-one, Heartsick, wishing it all was done. Oh, I'll tap my way around to the byre, And I'll hear the cows as they chew their hay; There ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... advanced,—the sudden pause Attention quickly drew, Rolled sightless orbs to learn the cause, ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... A third of the 70,000 sightless are amma, about a quarter as many practise acupuncture and the application of the moxa, while nearly the same number are musicians or storytellers. The blind have petitioned the Diet to restrict the calling of amma to men and women who ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... spiritual way. The blind, of all their sufferings, often feel most keenly the impossibility of knowing whether the truth is told them about their own looks; and he who will try and realize what it is to have been always sightless will understand that this is not vanity, but rather a sort of diffidence towards which all people should be very kind. Of all necessities of this world, of all blessings, of all guides to truth, God made light first. There are many sharp pains, many terrible ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... eyes. Consciousness returned only very slowly, and when Mr. Hunter had called him by name time and again and begged him to speak, he sighed even more deeply than before, the lids slowly drew back, and the almost sightless eyes looked feebly around. Then, with sudden flash of memory, the poor captain strove to rise. "My babies!" he moaned; ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... his tail; at the same distance, he would begin to growl at a stranger unless accompanied by a friend. From the author's long habit of noticing him, he used to recognise his step before it would seem possible for its sound to be heard. He followed him with his sightless eyes in whatever direction he moved, and was not satisfied until he had ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... for the Child, the sightless Boy, It is the triumph of his joy! The bravest Traveller in balloon, Mounting as if to reach the moon, Was never half so ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... obedience of the citizen but has no power to afford him protection." "Tell it not, sir," said he, "to the father whose son was starved at Andersonville, or the widow whose husband was slain at Mission Ridge, or the little boy who leads his sightless father through the streets of your city, of the thousand other mangled heroes to be seen on every side of us to-day, that this Government, in defense of which the son and the husband fell, the father lost his sight and the others were maimed and crippled, had the right to call those ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... and the Sightless. Two Plays by Maurice Maeterlinck. Translated from the French by ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... from thick Films shall purge the visual Ray, v. 5, 6.] And on the sightless Eye-ball pour the Day. 'Tis he th' obstructed Paths of Sound shall clear, And bid new Musick charm th' unfolding Ear, The Dumb shall sing, the Lame his Crutch forego, And leap exulting like the bounding Roe; [No Sigh, no Murmur the wide World shall ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... in summer, and Margaret was sitting before the cottage porch, feeling the sun's benevolent warmth, and tempering, with the closed lid, the hot rays that were directed to her sightless orbs. She had no power to move, and was happy in the still enjoyment of the lingering and lovely day. She might have been a statue for her quietness—but there were curves and lines in the decrepit frame ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... had heard from Jim and Haney constantly haunted him. He could not drive them away. In imagination he saw himself lying on the white, hot sands with open mouth, protruding tongue, black face and sightless eyes. The picture sent a thrill of horror through him and moved his dizzy, flagging brain to fresh resolution. He stumbled on through the blazing, parching, cruel heat, sometimes falling and lying motionless for a time, then pulling himself up and going on with ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... bathe his coal-black wings in mire, And unperceived fly with the filth away; But if the like the snow-white swan desire, The stain upon his silver down will stay. Poor grooms are sightless night, kings glorious day: Gnats are unnoted wheresoe'er they fly, But eagles gazed ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... with two thousand acres, and, in self-defence, has grown fat, vulgar, and a scold.—There is a Head for a painter! and what perfect peace and placidity all over the Blind Man's countenance! He is not a beggar although he lives on alms—those sightless orbs ask not for charity, nor yet those withered hands, as, staff-supported, he stops at the kind voice of the traveller, and tells his story in a few words. On the ancient Dervise moves, with his long silvery ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... a clear whistle was heard outside the house. "The doctor!" cried Melody, her sightless face lighting up with a flash of joy. "I must go," and she ran quickly out to ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... mirth, whose eyes have grown dim, whose lips tremblingly plead, "Lead, kindly light." "Lead, kindly light." The words are whispered by the old, whose tired feet are unable to move, whose palsied hands are helpless, whose head is bowed by the weight of years, whose eyes are sightless, from whose trembling lips are scarcely heard the whispered prayer, ...
— Wise or Otherwise • Lydia Leavitt
... in those lifts without official help; you know also how smoothly and silently the lifts slide. Kalon brought the lift to the girl's landing, and saw her, through the open door, writing in her slow, sightless way the will she had promised him. He called out to her cheerily that he had the lift ready for her, and she was to come out when she was ready. Then he pressed a button and shot soundlessly up to his own floor, walked through his own office, out on to his own balcony, ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... an extraordinary cry. He turned to see his father standing, one hand pressed back on the chair, his face white, his eyes black and empty, like sightless eyes. ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... hast a clod within thine hand, Life seems eternal, till the crumbling dust Runs through thy clenching fingers, and thy gage Mocks thee up from the mould'ring frame of Earth. There is no mystery like Death; it comes Sightless as the first breath of infant life, And goes to an unsearched Eternity— The End ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... skin at the angles of the drawn lips, white feelers like those of a barbel sprung from the lower jaw, and there was no sign of teeth within the mouth. But the horror of the face lay in the eyes, for those were sightless—white, in sockets as white as scraped bone, and blind. Yet for all this the face, wrinkled as the mask of a lion is drawn in Assyrian sculpture, was alive with rage and terror. One long white feeler touched our bulwarks. ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... purple colour, and in the uncertain light it was not easy to tell where the cloak ended, and the stain that embrued the snow began. On the other side of the block a decapitated head stood mounted on an upright pike, and the sightless eyes of Ramiro del' Orca looked from his grinning face upon the town of Cesena, which he ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... there he did not know, until, suddenly, across his sightless vision he saw form a long horizontal line of white. It was curious. But as he watched it grow in definiteness he saw that it was a coral reef smoking in the white Pacific surges. Next, in the line of breakers he made out a small canoe, an ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... bright blaze of eagle-wings! Crassus, sub pennis, penis! How he swings His bulk from yonder sightless poise, to bear me back to the Dominion of the air Where I shall bear the cup of Jupiter! Blind babes, love one another, no less true Because the gods have deigned to dwell with you! [The eagle ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley
... passage of three hours. When it rises again, the lovers are lying on the couch, in each other's arms, the lilies stream about them. The girl's bare arm is round LARRY'S neck. Her eyes are closed; his are open and sightless. There is no light ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... "The sightless submarine was then forced to come to the surface, whereupon the Birmingham's gunner fired the second shot of the fight. This shot struck at the base of the conning tower, ripping the whole of the upper structure clean and the ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... a conscious superiority to those of her own rank. It scarce seemed possible that a face, deprived of the advantage of sight, could have expressed character so strongly; but her eyes, which were almost totally closed, did not, by the display of their sightless orbs, mar the countenance to which they could add nothing. She seemed in a ruminating posture, soothed, perhaps, by the murmurs of the busy tribe around her to abstraction, though not ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... enjoy'd not long The triumph of his impious wrong: The vengeance of the god soon found him, And in a rocky dungeon bound him. There, sightless, chain'd, in woful tones He pour'd his unavailing groans, Mingled with all the blasts that shriek Round Athos' thunder-riven peak. O Thracian king! how vain the ire That urged thee 'gainst the Bacchic choir The god avenged his votaries well— Stern was the doom that thee befell; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... positions, these dead men. Some have their heads pillowed peacefully upon their arms as if in sleep. Others have their hard faces half buried in the sand. Others still lie prone upon their backs with bits of seaweed in their hair and their sightless eyes staring in ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... perfectly self-evident from the start that Mrs. Martin would throw cold water on anything requiring an outlay of money Craig accomplished his full purpose of securing an interview with Mr. Haswell. The invalid lay propped up in bed, and as we entered he heard us and turned his sightless eyes in our direction almost ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... opposite side of the room she saw a large crib with a cover or lid which could be closed and locked when necessary, but which was raised now. In this crib, upon a hard mattress and soiled pillow, lay the emaciated form of an old man. He turned his sightless eyes toward the door as he ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... a half start. He did not like the white, sightless eyes. Mahbub's hand on his neck bowed him to the floor, nose within an ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... blind, the retina having lost its function, the rest of the skin is said to recover its primordial sensitiveness to distance and light, so that the sightless have a clearer premonition of objects about them than seeing people could have in the dark. So when reason and the ordinary processes of sense are in abeyance a certain universal sensibility seems to return to the soul; influences at other times not appreciable ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... the story o'er and o'er; It was his full heart's only lore: A prophet on the Sabbath-day Had touched his sightless eyes with clay, And made him see who had been blind. Their words passed by him like the wind, Which raves and howls, but cannot shock ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... to an upright position and his sightless eyes were fixed upon his child. "Wouldst thou desecrate the holy of holies, the altars of ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... corral a man lay huddled in a dim corner, his sightless eyes open to the soft radiance of the Sonora moon. A group of Mexicans stood about, jabbering. Among them was Ramon Ortego. Ramon listened and said nothing. Pedro Salazar was dead. No one knew who had killed him. And only ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... he pleased with his daughter. It was a relief to him when Verena got up from her chair, with a movement which made Tarrant drop into the background as if his part were now over. She stood there with a quiet face, serious and sightless; then, after a short further delay, she ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... infirmity made him keep still while everyone else was awake and downstairs, and at night he wandered restlessly about until daybreak, as if he only dared to move in the darkness which makes all beings sightless for the time. It was an intense relief to everyone when one morning he ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... and moved among the closely set chairs and tables to the pavement. The sightless stare of light-blanched spectacles met his eyes. A gentlemanly-looking lady in short ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... all six, breathless, sightless, their faces turned to the winter sky. The tumult on the street came up as a faint echo; the spray of a score of engines pumping below fell upon them, froze, and covered them with ice. The very roar of the fire seemed far off. The sergeant was the first ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... In that awful grip they looked upon Death, but struggled on, as real men must until they fall. Breathing was agony; every step became a torture; fingers grasping the horses' bits grew stiff and deadened by frost; they reeled like drunken men, sightless in the mad swirl, deafened by the pounding of the blast against their ears. All consciousness left them; only dumb instinct kept them battling for life, staggering forward, foot by foot, odd phantasies of imagination beginning to beckon. In their weakness, delirium ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... well enough to come for food, Yet she sees me not; Her bright eye sees, but not me, not anything, Sightful, sightless, seeing ...
— Tortoises • D. H. Lawrence
... different person, far advanced in years, bent almost double, palsy-stricken, her arms and limbs shaking, her head nodding, her chin wagging, her snowy locks hanging about her wrinkled visage, her brows and upper lip frore, and her eyes almost sightless, the pupils being cased with a thin white film. Her dress, of antiquated make and faded stuff, had been once deep red in colour, and her old black hat was high-crowned and broad-brimmed. She partly aided herself ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... sleeves, and, stepping around the end of the counter, dropped upon his knees beside the raven. He touched it with long yellow fingers, then raised it and stared into the solitary eye, now glazed and sightless as its fellow. The smile had gone from the face of ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... that movement probably checked him, for he reared, and before his feet touched the ground again I was close to him; with a frantic effort I caught his bridle, and swept his head round. Mariamne fell, voiceless, sightless, and breathless, into my arms. The spot where she was saved was within a single bound of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... colleges, nay, courts and governments, would outbid one another in the purchase. Or what would we not give to be permitted to look even on a copy of the Paradise Lost with a calotype portrait of the poet in front—serenely placid in blindness and adversity, solacing himself, with upturned though sightless eyes, amid the sublime visions of the ideal world? How deep the interest which would attach to a copy of Clarendon's History of the Civil War, with calotypes of all the more remarkable personages who figured ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... clasp like a winding wisp of emerald foam fondly wrapping the yielding waist of Wishnu's sea-born wife. And she was very tall, and shaped like Shri, and she stood with her head a little bent, and her sightless eyes fixed as it were on empty space, just as though she were listening for some expected sound. And as he continued to gaze at her, a wonder that was almost horror crept into his mind. For her face was not like that of an image, but rather resembled a mask, or the face ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... of raising a band of volunteers for some expedition against the enemy, rides from aoul to aoul summoning all good swords to follow, he transports along with him on the crupper of an attendant the aged minstrel, who at the gates sings the call to arms. His sightless eyeballs in frenzy roll, and the braves, both old and young, carried away now by his pathos and now by his rage, shout in chorus their ka-ri-ra, and spring into their saddles. And when at last the ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... I board 'Blind Rodgers,'" she went on, still deeper to bury my regret and confusion. I had heard of him; his sightless, gentle ambition it was to live without ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... Sightless and strong oblivion in utter life takes possession of me! The unknown, strong current of life supreme drowns me and sweeps me away and holds me down to the sources of mystery, in the depths, extinguishes there my risen resurrected life and kindles it further ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence
... other?" uttered Jorgenson's voice at their backs. He also was turned that way with his strange sightless gaze fixed ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... in the legislatur'. Look at him—look at him! He's got FOUR eyes! Look at his hair—hit's PARTED IN THE MIDDLE!" There was a storm of laughter—Uncle Josh had made good—and if the Hon. Samuel could straightway have turned bald-headed and sightless, he would have been a happy man. He looked sick with hopelessness, but Uncle Tommie Hendricks, his mentor, was vigorously whispering something in his ear, and gradually his face cleared. Indeed, the Hon. Samuel was smilingly confident when ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.
... by a lad to the organ, which, as leader, he played. One day, while conducting his oratorio of "Samson," the old man turned pale and trembled with emotion, as the bass sung the blind giant's lament: "Total eclipse! no sun, no moon!" As the audience saw the sightless eyes turned towards them, ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... light flag for a minute, and the anchor was instantly raised. A schooner, also outward bound, soon gently burst its way through the cloudy barrier, and I tried to follow her, but she too melted into dimness, and left me in a noiseless, sightless vacancy, except when the distant gong of the light-ship told that they also had a ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... that love is sightless, but that is the love which romps among the roses and is blinded by their thorns. There is another and a better tradition that love's eyes pierce heaven, and this is a great truth; for infinity is cold and vaporous until man projects upon it his mortal ideal, his conception ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... Pyatnitsky Street. She found old Fyodor Stepanovitch in the same big drawing-room in which the service had been held on her first arrival. Wearing slippers, and without a cravat, he was sitting motionless in his arm-chair, blinking with his sightless eyes. ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Thus he spake; and towards him the aged sire opened his sightless eyes, and lifted them up and replied with ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... founts of light, And Witiza's the guilt! when, bent with age, He knew the voice again, and told the name, Of those whose proffered fortunes had been laid Before his throne, while happiness was there, And strained the sightless nerve tow'rd where they stood At the forced memory of the very oaths He heard renewed from each, but heard afar, For they were loud, and him the throng ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... Rabbis—the doctors or teachers of the Law—are sitting in a half-circle, facing the doorway. They are grave men, with long beards and flowing robes. Many of them are old and grey. The Rabbi nearest us has a specially withered face, and eyes that have become sightless with age. The one next him holds in his hand a little metal box with leather thongs hanging down from it. This is a phylactery, containing texts of Scripture written on parchment, and the thongs are for fastening it on the forehead. Another of the group wears his phylactery in its proper position. ...
— Evangelists of Art - Picture-Sermons for Children • James Patrick
... watch for wayfarers. Not until night fell, and the cloud-masked moon disappeared behind the western bluffs, were small blankets pinned into place across the windows, and the peering shock head made sightless. ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... own identity, even though memory persisted in its identifying suggestion. And if in addition to this we found ourselves without the contribution of physical sensation to which we have always been used—sightless, soundless, touchless—one can easily imagine a shock in the face of which even the most strongly centered personality would give way. And yet such changes as this probably only faintly indicate the adjustments which the discarnate are called upon ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... undoubtedly a force abroad among large masses of people, the force which forms the basis of the principle of public prayer, and I am conscious of it too, only it distresses me; moreover, the worst and most afflicting nightmare I have is the sensation of standing sightless and motionless, but with all the other senses alert and apprehensive, in the presence of a ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... couldst develop—if that withered tongue Could tell us what those sightless orbs have seen— How the world looked when it was fresh and young And the great deluge still had left it green; Or was it then so old that history's pages Contained no record ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Fourth Book of the immortal poem of your Blind Bard (to whose sightless orbs no doubt Glorious Shapes were apparent, and Visions Celestial), how Adam discourses to Eve of the Bright Visitors who hovered round ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... creeps the muddy crowd detached from the factory. The west wind sets quivering their overalls, blue or black or khaki, excites the woolly tails that flutter from muffled necks, scatters some evil odors, attacks the sightless faces ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... have been actually sightless, his pallid features a lifeless mask, for all the expression they conveyed; there was absolutely no facial sign by which I could even determine whether I commanded his attention; but his hands were never quiet, the slender, nervous ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... sits Mr. Wells, a little old white-haired gentleman, very spruce and tidy, with neatly clipped moustache and neatly pointed beard, and peering little cloudy eyes which are sightless. ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... Fortune, too, favored them when they arrived at the O'Hara house; for there, leaning on the decaying gate, stood Eileen O'Hara, her face raised to the sky as though seeking in the soft star radiance which fell upon her lids a celestial balm for her sightless eyes. ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... tell us to "look in the drain, or among those bushes over there." During the day they had heard a groan. A groan, mind you, and there were men there with legs off, and arms hanging by a skin, and men sightless, with half their face gone, with bowels exposed, and every kind of unmentionable wounds, yet some one had groaned. Why, some had gritted teeth on bayonets, others had stuffed their tunics in their mouths, lest they should groan. Some one had written of the Australian soldier ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... of some new feeling crossed the Prophet's face, as his glance rested on the old man who slowly approached with feeble steps, bent back, and anxious, sightless eyes. But, as quickly as it had come, the expression passed, and he stepped forward for the old ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... were brought and decided, and those from the tailor were paid for; the ages came, like maiden aunts, uninvited, and lingered till they became a bore—and still Simprella, with the magician's curse upon her, conducted her sightless guide ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... forever, fallen. His intercourse with the living world is now ended; and those who would hereafter find him must seek him in the grave. There, cold and lifeless, and the heart which just now was the seat of friendship. There, dim and sightless is the eye, whose radiant and enlivening orb beamed with intelligence; and there, closed forever are those lips, on whose persuasive accents we have so often and ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... into the streets of teeming foreign quarters, jamming into barrooms, voicing wildest rumors, talking, shouting, pounding tables with huge fists. And to me there was nothing inspiring but only something terrible here, an appalling force turned loose, sightless and unguided. What a fool I had been to hope. The harbor ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... form that had been Druse sat up in bed with a mighty effort, and turned its sightless eyes joyfully toward Miss ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... just a moment when Jesus was near to hear the sound of his voice. If Bartimeus failed that moment he would be blind forever. I can see him quickly turning his sightless eyes in the direction of the Savior. He cried unto him and it was his earnestness that saved him. We must make haste ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... darkly into the steely, sightless eyes of the traitor. Death's awful calm had set the expression; but the man's whole life was there, its better part sadly shining forth among the ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... it. Bones and skulls of droves of cattle on all the strand above the tide mark for many score yards. Their ribs stuck out from the snow everywhere, and the sightless eye sockets grinned at me as I stumbled over them. But I had no time to wonder how they came there, for I must get to the summit before Evan and his men reached it by their way along the cliff. I ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... in the dark—deep down in the dark, With the terror of death in each sightless eye, Which tells how hard 'tis to burn and die ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... school. The elder Bruce tried hard to make her see one of his vile grimaces, but, feeling as if every nerve in her body were being stung with eyes, she never dared to look away from the book which she held upside down before her own sightless eyes.—This pillory was the punishment due to falling asleep, as hell was the punishment for forgetting God; and there she had to ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... whom his gray-haired father was an object of the fondest and most reverential affection, beheld with horror the gradual advances of the disease which was about to render the remaining years of life a burden to the sightless man. With the fractiousness of advancing age and growing infirmity, old Philipp obstinately refused to seek the assistance of any learned leech of the country round. Brannau and Burchhausen boasted each of a chirurgic wonder, but Stroer misdoubted or defied ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... to her father. Her one passion of life is to compensate to him all he has lost: the eyes, once so full of fire, now sightless; the son and brother, who, at the call of an enthusiasm with which their nobler natures refuse to sympathise—for it was, in the first instance, but the supposed need to save his own soul—has fled from his nearest duty of life. To this devotion ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... remember clearly that in the very act of turning, and while my look still held that beggar's face within the field of vision, I saw the sightless eyes turn bright a moment as though he opened them and saw. He did most certainly ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... marred by apparent grammatical obscurity. The face of beauty is marred when one of the eyes seems sightless. We re-read the lines to see if we are mistaken. If they were in a foreign language, we should say we did not ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... bark, and cast me on the wave Where all my hopes had found a sudden grave. Love makes us blind and selfish: otherwise I had seen Helen's secret in her eyes; So used I was to reading every look In her sweet face, as I would read a book. But now, made sightless by love's blinding rays, I had gone on unseeing, to the end Where Pain dispelled the mist of golden haze That walled me in, and lo! I found my friend Who journeyed with me—at my very side, Had been sore ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... gazed, it assumed the outline of a human form—then the features of Mary White, the foster-sister whom he had murdered. The apparition grew still plainer. The ghastly countenance; the fallen lip; the sightless eye, dull and open with a vacant stare; the deep, solemn, mysterious repose which ever accompanies the aspect of death; the deep wound near the heart, from which gushed life's crimson torrent, falling at her feet without a sound—each—all, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various |
