"Twilight" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... alcove, unobserved, apart, Young Gawayne sat with Lady Elfinhart, In Arthur's court no goodlier knight than he Wore shirt of mail, or Cupid's panoply; And Elfinhart, to Gawayne's eager eyes. Of all heaven's treasures seemed the goodliest prize. Now daylight faded, and the twilight gloom Deepened the stillness in the vaulted room, Save where upon the hearth a fitful glow Blushed from the embers as the fire burned low. There is a certain subtle twilight mood, When two hearts meet in a dim solitude, That thrills the soul e'en to the finger-tips, And brings the heart's dear ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... the officers walked about smoking their cigars as if their work was done. Only a few sailors were at work at the big ropes, but they didn't shout as before. The weather had changed, too, for the twilight was unlike what the day had promised. The sky was soft gray, with faint streaks of yellow on the horizon. The air was still and pleasant, much warmer than it had been all the day; and the water was as motionless ...
— From Plotzk to Boston • Mary Antin
... temples of the Holy Ghost, will live again in glory, one would like to believe with Dante that the hymns, temples of the Word, are likewise immortal, and that they will still be heard in the everlasting. Doubtless in the twilight glens of Purgatory the bewailing souls continue to sing the Te lucis ante terminum, even as in the star-circles, where the Blessed move ever, will always leap up the triumphant notes ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... from an oilskin pouch. They were in a pointed feminine hand, and the ink was faded. Granger lit the lamp, for the twilight without was deepening into darkness; spreading out the crumpled sheets on his knees before him, he read their contents aloud. Across the top, left-hand corner of the uppermost page was scrawled in a rude, boyish writing, "The first letter she ever ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... conspicuous, which, by putting on a less aperture, may be found to vanish; and therefore, both for the discovery of the fixt Star, and for finding the Satellites of Jupiter, before it be out of the day, or twilight, I alwayes leave the Object-glass as clear without any aperture as I can, and have thereby been able to discover the Satellites a long while before; I was able to discern them, when the smaller apertures were put on; and at other times, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... and sank lowering to dent its red disk behind far-distant spurs, they halted in a shady canyon or likely spot in a dry wash and tried for water. When they found it they unpacked, gave drink to the tired burros, and turned them loose. Dead mesquite served for the campfire. While the strange twilight deepened into weird night they sat propped against stones, with eyes on the dying embers of the fire, and soon they lay on the sand with the light of white stars on ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... hero of a fine tale of adventure, describes himself as petrified with terror when he entered the audience-chamber. "I stretched myself on my stomach," he writes, "and became unconscious before him (the Pharaoh). This god addressed me kindly, but I was as a man overtaken by the twilight: my soul departed, my flesh trembled; my heart was no more in my body that I should know life from death."[1] Similarly another personage writes: "Remember the day of bringing the tribute, when thou passest into the Presence under the window, the nobles on each side before his Majesty, the nobles ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... Bab with the plateful of goodies; and, drawing Ben down beside her on the wide step, Miss Celia took out the letters, with a shadow creeping over her face as softly as the twilight was stealing over the world, while the dew fell, and every thing grew still ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... Jo and his small companion had been guided by her footsteps, it followed that Poopy, in retracing them, gradually drew near to the terrified pair. The short twilight of those regions had already deepened into the shades of night; so that the poor girl's form was not at first visible, as she advanced from among the dark shadows of the overhanging cliffs and the large masses of scattered ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... belief of the kind which I conceive to be the noblest, and to discipline my intellect with regard to this matter into an attitude of the purest scepticism. And forasmuch as I am far from being able to agree with those who affirm that the twilight doctrine of the "new faith" is a desirable substitute for the waning splendour of "the old," I am not ashamed to confess that with this virtual negation of God the universe to me has lost its soul of loveliness; and although from henceforth the precept to "work while it ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... he was captain of the 'Crescent City,' I was bringing the boat into port at New Orleans, and momently expecting orders from the hurricane deck, but received none. I had stopped the wheels, and there my authority and responsibility ceased. It was evening—dim twilight—the captain's hat was perched upon the big bell, and I supposed the intellectual end of the captain was in it, but such was not the case. The captain was very strict; therefore I knew better than to touch a bell ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and what foes they slew, And sent to join the melancholy crew. When a new spirit in that world was found, A thousand shadowy forms came flitting round: Those who had known him, fond inquiries made, - 'Of all we left, inform us, gentle shade, Now as we lead thee in our realms to dwell, Our twilight groves, and meads of asphodel.' "What paints the poet, is our station here, Where we like ghosts and flitting shades appear: This is the hell he sings, and here we meet, And former deeds to new-made ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... he stepped once more into the street, the shadows had lengthened; twilight was falling. He stopped at a pawnbroker's, purchased a revolver and cartridges. He might need the weapon now more than ever. And money—he needed far more of that than he had. He spread in his palm the little wad of greenbacks he took from his ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... It was as if some spirit of heaven had taken possession of my soul to give me sweet presentiments of the approach of better days. And so perhaps it was. I was moving onwards, though I knew it not, to a happier destiny, and the peace and joy I felt were as the dawn or twilight of the coming day of ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... the bushes, and forming into a long line, which, as soon as formed, was at once hidden at regular intervals by flashes of flame that seemed to leap from one gun-barrel to the next, as you have seen a current of electricity run along a line of gas-jets. In the dim twilight these flashes were much more blinding than they had been in the glare of the sun, and the crash of the artillery coming on top of the silence was the more fierce and terrible by the contrast. The Turks were so close ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... Twilight had come, the gas had been turned on, and the three anxious ladies stood in the window gazing vainly at endless vehicles, when the door opened and they beheld sundry ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all clean clothes, folded his stock carefully, and donned his best coat. Then, being ready, as grey twilight was falling, he went across to the orchard to gather the daffodils. The wind was roaring in the apple trees, the yellow flowers swayed violently up and down, he heard even the fine whisper of their spears as he stooped to break the flattened, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... passage into the dim twilight beyond, she could see running figures like shadows approaching the house. Sanford Browne rose at his wife's summons in time to meet the convict Lewis, still manacled, as he rushed into the passage at the back of the house ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... At twilight they would gather from every direction for the courting, some in groups, humming to the accompaniment of clucking and a sort of whinnying, others alone, blowing on the bimbau, an instrument made of small sheets of iron, which buzzed like a hornet, serving to lull them into forgetfulness ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... missionary remained standing on the threshold of the door. His long black cassock was half lost in the shadows of the cathedral; whilst his angelic countenance, with its border of long light hair, now pale and agitated by pity and grief, was illumined by the last faint rays of twilight. This countenance shone with so divine a beauty, and expressed such touching and tender compassion, that the crowd felt awed as, with his large blue eyes full of tears, and his hands clasped together, he exclaimed, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... for that part of Sussex where my charmer was confined, which was not above thirty miles distant from Deal, where we mounted. As I was perfectly well acquainted with the extent of the squire's estate and influence, I halted within five miles of his house, where we remained till the twilight, at which time we set forward, and, by the favour of a dark night, reached a copse about half-a-mile from the village where Mrs. Sagely lived. Here we left our horses tied to a tree, and went directly to the house of my old ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... an almost silent, but not uninterested spectator of the family storm. As the parties were talking, it had grown almost dark; and after the lull which succeeded the passionate outbreak of the Major, George's deep voice, as it here broke trembling into the twilight room, was heard with no small emotion ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... man like Harrison was not likely to stay at Charringworth very late, but it seems that whatever occurred on the highway happened after twilight. ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... Through the deepening twilight they could see at the head of the column and immediately before the band, a double platoon of young girls dressed in white, under the command of an officer distinguished from the others by her red sash, all marching with a beautiful precision to the tap of the drum. As the head of the column ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... still felt all around him, under the dome of golden evening, an Old World savor and reverberation in that riverhaunted garden. The next square of turf which he crossed seemed at first sight quite deserted, till he saw in the twilight of trees in one corner of it a hammock and in the hammock a man, reading a newspaper and swinging one leg over the edge of ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... for the dawn of day, As o'er the mountain peaks afar Hangs in the twilight cold and gray, Like a bright lamp, the morning star! Though slow the daybeams creep along The serried pines which top the hills, And gloomy shadows brood among The ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and went with downcast eyes, her lips still repeating prayers, to the font of holy water, which was in a dim shadowy corner, where a painted window cast a gold and violet twilight. Suddenly there was a rustle of garments in the dimness, and a jewelled hand essayed to pass holy water to her on the tip of its finger. This mark of Christian fraternity, common in those times, Agnes almost mechanically accepted, touching her slender finger to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... which, before their flowering-time, the chemist's package had embalmed on warm evenings of spring. That rosy candlelight was still their colour, but half-extinguished and deadened in the diminished life which was now theirs, and which may be called the twilight of a flower. Presently my aunt was able to dip in the boiling infusion, in which she would relish the savour of dead or faded blossom, a little madeleine, of which she would hold out a piece to me when it was ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... slowly across the open country in the waning day. Before them on the hilltop were the grey towers and the piled-up houses of Theos, a picturesque medley with their red roofs and white fronts now fast becoming blurred in the gathering twilight. As they neared the road a sudden waft of perfume from the lavender-fields beyond filled the air, and a breath of wind came sweeping through the yellow corn-fields. Brand, with his hat in his hand, ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... prepared, stole forward, through ground which he had reconnoitred carefully in the twilight of the preceding evening, until he was not only certain that he was in the neighbourhood of a very large body of men, who were standing fast betwixt the King's quarters and the suburbs, but also that there was a detached party of smaller number ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... daylight's crimson veil Floats o'er the mountain tops, while twilight pale Calls up her vaporous shrouds from every vale; Why ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... dim twilight had hid, the firelight revealed in all its disheartening truth. What had been once a beautiful heap of valuable plumes, now lay an ugly ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... Guernsey. Well, he'd go to Guernsey, and he wouldn't go alone. Hugo thoroughly enjoyed a plot. The twilight world that had been so difficult and perplexing to poor Fay had for him a sort of exciting charm. Wren's End had become dreadfully dull. For the first week or two, while he felt so ill, it had been ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... had gone out in person, and posted himself on the hill from which the grooms had viewed the shepherd, and he, too, was a spectator of all that had taken place. After the shepherd had thus obtained the dragon's head, twilight began to approach. He washed himself nicely, took the falcon on his shoulder, the hounds behind him, and the bagpipes under his arm, played as he went, drove the sheep, and proceeded to the emperor's palace, with the damsel at ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... carriage, the rattle of harness and wheels, the cracking of the postillions' whips, all contributed to making her head ache, and to chase slumber away. But gradually her thoughts became more confused, as the dim winter twilight gradually faded into night and a veil of impenetrable blackness spread itself outside the windows ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... cherished this precious illusion while the daylight lasted, which was not long; there is little twilight in the tropics. Soon the chevalier saw, with astonishment, the summits of the trees little by little obscure themselves, and assume a fantastic appearance in the great mass of the forest. For some moments there remained a half-shade, here and there lighted by ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... meetin', when the sun had let down his long bars of gold and crimson and yellow, and had got over 'em, and sunk down behind 'em out of sight. And we could ketch glimpses through the willow- sprays of them shinin' bars a layin' down on the gray twilight field. And fur away over the green hills and woods of the east, the moon was a risin', big and calm and silvery. And we could hear the plaintive evenin' song of the thrush, and the crickets' happy chirp, till we got nearer the schoolhouse, when they sort o' blended in with 'There is a fountain ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... o'clock. Twilight was falling on the woods; and Rodes' and Colston's divisions had become so inextricably mingled that officers could not find their men nor men their officers. But Jackson, galloping into the disordered ranks, directed them to press the pursuit. ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... persuaded his uncle to let him stop work in the afternoon at four-thirty in order to have time to do the milking and chores, and he found that by hurrying he could get through before six o'clock. So that night in the early twilight, he paced off the length of the south side of the pond and found it was approximately seven hundred feet from the bridge to the forebay. He remembered that, except on rare occasions, the opening between the abutments of the bridge that carried the lane over the brook had always been sufficient ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... a pencil and an old piece of a letter, and wrote out a notice and tacked it up on the big oak-tree, claiming those mining claims according to miners' law, for the three children. A couple of miners laughed as they went by in the twilight, to see what he was doing; and he laughed with them. But as he limped on down ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... opened, and he went in, the door closing behind him. "He proceeded through a long passage, where the air was soft and agreeably warm, like a May evening, as is all the air in elfland. The light was a sort of twilight or gloaming; but there were neither windows nor candles, and he knew not whence it came if it was not from the walls and roof, which were rough and arched like a grotto, and composed of a clear transparent rock incrusted with sheep's silver, and spar and various bright stones." At ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... It was almost twilight when they went out at the kitchen door. They left the trio in the sitting room speechless for the moment. But Sheila Macklin's speechlessness arose through different thoughts from those of ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... on her bed. But before the sun set, the weather unexpectedly changed, and a fine drizzling rain set in. So gently come the autumn showers that dull and fine are subject to uncertain alternations. The shades of twilight gradually fell on this occasion. The heavens too got so overcast as to look deep black. Besides the effect of this change on her mind, the patter of the rain on the bamboo tops intensified her despondency, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... he counted them by the steps he had cut—a few for a year—only a few. He sang no more; he said no more, "I will do this or that"—he only worked. And at night, when the twilight settled down, there looked out at him from the holes and crevices in the ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner
... it is over, the long bright Day, And little Maid Twilight, quiet and meek, Comes stealing along in her creep-mouse way Whispering low—for she may not speak— "The Gentle Dark is coming to play At a ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... it had slackened into melancholy. Melancholy is made up of a succession of such oscillations, the first touching upon despair, the last on the border between pain and pleasure; in youth, it is the twilight of dawn; in age, the ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... belonging to the brigantine was ready and waiting alongside when they came upon deck, and immediately they descended to it and took their seats. Reaching the shore, they landed, and walked up the village street in the twilight, she clinging to our hero's arm as though she would faint away. The Captain of the brigantine and two other men aboard accompanied them to the minister's house, where they found the good man waiting for them, smoking his pipe in the warm evening, ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... mountains themselves, their giant crests pitched like mighty tents drowsing placidly between earth and heaven. Now their four o'clock veil of blue-purple mist lay filmed about their shoulders, but later they would stand out in bold silhouette cutting into the twilight sky. Everywhere was the soft smell of new-mown hay; everywhere the silences of the eternal, broken only by the muffled noises of Transley's outfit trailing down ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... mile, with the sullen roar increasing till it became one deep musical boom; and, turning a corner where a portion of the cliff overhung the narrow path, and long strands of ivy hung down away from the stones, he stepped out of a green twilight into broad sunshine, to stand upon a shelf of rock, gazing into a circular pool some hundred ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... Eden was very hard on God. That evening early, in the twilight, God came walking in the garden to have the usual talk with His friend. He came to keep tryst. It was the usual trysting place and trysting hour, and God had the trysting spirit. We may think He came early for this bit ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... of Boris saw further through the forest than those of most men but in a moment those of the Grand Duke Peter confirmed him. Figures were moving in the twilight, along the ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... after their officer, who rode towards their quarters, musing on the course it behooved him to pursue in the present dilemma. It was twilight when Mason's party reached the dwelling, before the door of which were collected a great number of the officers and men, busily employed in giving and listening to the most exaggerated accounts of the escape of the spy. ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... cases) but because she was then careless and untidy and totally unconscious of her personal appearance. She told me herself that she was not even conscious then of her personal existence. She was a mere adjunct in the twilight life of her aunt, a Frenchwoman, and her uncle, the orange merchant, a Basque peasant, to whom her other uncle, the great man of the family, the priest of some parish in the hills near Tolosa, had sent her up at the age of ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... he would make me believe in devils and hell."[317] And thus the unhappy man who had began this episode in his life with confident ecstasy in the glories and clear music of spring, ended it looking out from a narrow chamber upon the sullen crimson of the wintry twilight and over fields silent in snow, with the haggard desperate gaze ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... the college year, and she is bound that it shall be as long as possible. So she throws caution and her furs to the winds and dons a muslin gown, plans drives and picnics despite April showers, and takes twilight strolls regardless of lurking germs of pneumonia. The grass grows green perforce and the buds swell to meet her wishes, while the sun, finding a creature after his brave, warm heart, does ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... climbed over it or squeezed around it to your place. The chairs were rifle-ammunition boxes, whose contents had been emptied with individual care, bullet by bullet, at the Germans in the trench on the other side of the wheatfield. Dinner was at nine in the evening, when it was still twilight in the longest days of the year in this region. The hour fits in with trench routine, when night is the time to be on guard and you sleep by day. Breakfast comes at nine in the morning. I was invited to help eat the chicken and ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... depressing aspect of twilight had now settled down upon the sweltering and deluged country, and the air was warm, thick, moist, and consequently unhealthy. The cabin of the Daltons was placed in a low, damp situation; but fortunately ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... "Rajani" in its own way through the bed of my Bengali reflecting its sound and sense, and trying to echo back its music that descends on all with the fading twilight. ...
— Sandhya - Songs of Twilight • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... passed. The sun had been set for an hour, and the night is already rather dark notwithstanding the long twilight of these northern regions, for a blanket of vapour has gathered over the heaven, and a few stray drops have begun to fall from it. A thin wind now and then wakes, and gives a feeble puff, but seems immediately to change its mind and resolve not to blow, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... just on the crest, Only a few feet high: She was tired, and we stopped in the twilight-time for her rest, At the ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... in the twilight, found her lying on the bed, with a feverish flush on her cheeks. The grieved, childlike droop of the sensitive little mouth told its own story, and Miss Barbara ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... all forms of danger upon the unsavory punishment he is capable of inflicting. He is quite indifferent to both man and beast, and will not hurry himself to get out of the way of either. Walking through the summer fields at twilight, I have come near stepping upon him, and was much the ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... dead, when they go to the Underworld, drink of the pool of Lethe; and forgetfulness of all that has passed comes upon them like a sleep, and they lose their longing for the world, they lose their memory of pain, and live content with that cool twilight. But not the pool of Lethe itself could withstand the song of Orpheus; and in the hearts of the Shades all the old dreams awoke wondering. They remembered once more the life of men on Earth, the glory of the sun and moon, the sweetness of new ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... emblem of a race that had lived almost on the same spot for eight hundred years, through good and bad repute, but in nearly uninterrupted prosperity. The Baroness, who hankered after greatness, felt that the gloom was a twilight of gods. She stood still before the canopy, the symbol of princely rank and privilege, the invisible silk bellows were silent for a few seconds, and she wondered whether there were any procurable sum which she and her husband would grudge in ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... bore him in and set the bier down under the mid-arch. Then Gilbert Warde looked up and faced his mother; but he stood aside, that she might see her husband; and the monks and song- boys stood back also, with their wax torches, which cast a dancing glare through the dim twilight. Gilbert's face was white and stern; but the Lady Goda was pale, too, and her heart fluttered, for she had to play the last act of her married life before many who would watch her narrowly. For one moment she hesitated whether to scream or to ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... could; all that went on like his breathing or circulation. But he never consciously carried his actions outside the sphere of his own duty; and in this case the two attitudes were aptly tested. He was just about to resume his trudge in the twilight, telling himself it was no affair of his, but instinctively twisting and untwisting twenty theories about what the odd noises might mean. Then the grey sky-line brightened into silver, and in the broadening light he realized that he had been to ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... on one side, brother, You Trimmers should, to poize it, hang on t'other. Damned neuters, in their middle way of steering, Are neither fish, nor flesh, nor good red-herring: Not Whigs, nor Tories they; nor this, nor that; Not birds, nor beasts; but just a kind of bat: A twilight animal, true to neither cause, With Tory wings, but Whigish ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... faded and twilight was coming on when the two went down the steps and crossed the cloistered garden to the chapel, for it was the hour for Vespers. They walked as usual, with an even, noiseless tread, the young nun on the left of her ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... find it necessary to prevail upon the Prophet to give over his discourse. As soon as the emissary appeared Elias folded his ample umbrella, tucked it under his arm, gave Vaniman a friendly greeting, and winked at him. The twilight dimmed the seamed face and the young man wondered whether he had been mistaken about the sly ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... time the shadows had begun to lengthen in the room as the first traces of early twilight filled the valley. The gurgling still continued down the water pipe; the old sign before the front door moaned monotonously. An occasional gust of wind, which mysteriously penetrated the mist without sweeping it aside, rattled the windows and waved wildly in mid-air a venturesome ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... reply but excused himself and went out to the wide steps of the front porch where he sat down to watch the peaceful twilight as it crept ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... Said Victor Hugo in his old age, "When I go down to the grave, I can say, like so many others, 'I have finished my day's work;' but I cannot say, 'I have finished my life.' My day's work will begin again next morning. My tomb is not a blind alley, it is a thoroughfare; it closes with the twilight to open with ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... for a moon to light me home! O for a lanthorn green! For those sweet stars the Pleiades, That glitter in the twilight trees; O for a lovelorn taper! O ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... at Hollywell, it was twilight, but no one was in the drawing-room, generally so cheerful at that time of day; the fire had lately been smothered with coals, and looked gloomy and desolate. Mr. Edmonstone left Philip there, and ran up to see how Charles was, and soon after Laura came in, sprang to his side, and held his hand ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of fleecy mantle; neither had the wind relaxed a single day from shaking them. As a rule, it snowed all day, cleared up at night, and froze intensely, with the stars as bright as jewels, earth spread out in lustrous twilight, and the sounds in the air as sharp and crackling as artillery; then in the morning, snow again; before the ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... lady's hair had been black. But now, as suddenly as darkness vanishes in a tropic dawn, it was become light. No gradual approach of the grey, for the black had been equally artificial. The wig is the region without twilight. Only in the swart moustache had the grey crept on, so that perhaps the growing incongruity had necessitated ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... the finest and longest days of the year, and the moon, in all her brilliancy, succeeded to this inauspicious daylight. The balancelle, which was pursuing the little bark before the wind, had then still half an hour of twilight, and a whole night almost as ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... idea most people have of Rembrandt is, that he is one of the dark masters: but his shadows are not black, they are filled with transparency. The backgrounds to his portraits are less dark than many of either Titian or Tintoret. His landscapes are not black, they are the soft emanations of twilight; and when he leads you through the shadows of night, you see the path, even in the deepest obscurity. As colour forms a constituent part of chiaro-scuro, I must, in this division, confine myself more particularly to black and white, both in giving examples from his etchings, ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... he was about to perform some singular experiment, and in the darkness the peacocks upon the doors seemed to glow with a more intense colour. I cast off the illusion, which was, I believe, merely caused by memory, and by the twilight of incense, for I would not acknowledge that he could overcome my now mature intellect; and I said: 'Even if I grant that I need a spiritual belief and some form of worship, why should I go to Eleusis and not to Calvary?' He leaned forward and began speaking with a slightly ...
— Rosa Alchemica • W. B. Yeats
... stretch out their little finger to obtain it. I came to England just in time to see my father leave the stage, and close his laborious professional career. After a long life of public exhibition, and the glare of excitement which inevitably attends upon it, to withdraw into the sober twilight of private life is a great trial, and I fear he finds it so. His health is not as good as it was while he still exercised his profession, and I think he misses the stimulus of the ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... twilight he was walking along the path that runs through the heather along the edge of the rusty dark ironstone lake opposite the pine-woods. He spoke his thoughts aloud to the discreet bat that flitted ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... fought here. Still a few, loath to leave their all to the ravages of an army, decided to remain and trust to fate. But soon after the firing along the river began, we saw groups of women and children and a few old men in the glim twilight of the morning rushing along the roads out from the city as fast as their feeble limbs and tender feet could carry them, hunting a safe retreat in the backwoods until the cloud of war broke or passed over. Some Were, carrying babes ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... thou saidst: "At set of sun My humble taskwork will be done; And through the twilight street Come back to view my jewels, when Pattering through the throng of ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... of the new snow began to fall, and the sinister sky, heavy with clouds, took on the darkness of twilight, although night was far away. Yet the huge rents and holes in the houses and the fallen masonry seemed to grow more distinct in the gloom. The village consisted chiefly of one long street, and as John looked ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Lord protect us, who as he stands in mysterious meditation, bathed in twilight, motionless, and ashy pale[1], with the crystal moon in his yellow hair, appears to the host of worshippers on his left, a woman, and to those on his ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... world in our neighborhood had fallen into the unillumined dumps. An ominous mournfulness, far sadder than the pensiveness of twilight, drew over the sky. Clouds, that donned brilliancy for the fond parting of mountain-tops and the sun, now grew cheerless and gray; their gay robes were taken from them, and with bended heads they fled away from the sorrowful wind. In western glooms beyond the world a dreary gale had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... far shouts, now homeward bound, Across the fields the reapers go; And, with the darkness closing round, The lilies of the twilight blow. ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... clouds rose ponderously upon the hilltops, blacking out the twilight with an abruptness which must have held deep significance for men less occupied. But the dominant overcast of their minds was the coming of the sheriff. For many of them it was far more ominous than any storm ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... ambitions beyond fulfilment. Now realities saddened the thought of it and brought ambition within a new environment less splendid than the old. But, despite clouds, hope shone fairly forth at last. So a planet, that the eye has followed at twilight and then lost a while, beams anew at dawn after lapse of days, and wheels in wide mazes upon some new background ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... Not terror and not destiny Behind its loved, maternal face, Its power to change, or fade, replace Its wonder with a deeper dream, Unfolding to a vaster theme. From time eternal was this earth? No less this landscape with your birth Arose, nor leaves you, nor decay Finds till the twilight of your day. It bore you, moulds you to its plan. It ends with you as it began, But bears the seed of future years Of higher ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... like to describe the scenery of the twenty miles of country that lie between Granville and Coutances, but I have only passed over it on one occasion. It was nine o'clock in the evening, and the long drawn-out twilight had nearly faded away as I climbed up the long ascent which commences the road to Coutances, and before I had reached the village of Brehal it was quite dark. The road became absolutely deserted, and although one or ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... the cause of the trouble was almost in their clutches. A disappointed yell arose. Pobloff had sneaked away, overjoyed at the chance, and, as his front door succumbed to angry feminine pressure, he was safely hidden in the opera house which he reached by running along back alleys in the twilight. There he learned from one of the stage hands that the real secret was his ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... felt the dusk growing on her as she progressed steadily on her way, with that odious man beside her. She had been thinking of other things, and her eyes had accustomed themselves gradually to the fading twilight, But now, when she saw the glimmer of the lamps from the inn-windows, she knew that the night had come upon her, and she began to fear that she had been imprudent in allowing herself to be out so late—imprudent, ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... as would follow him, in a poor leaky cutter, up the sea now in commemoration of that adventure called Davis' Strait. He ascended four degrees north of the furthest known point, among storms and icebergs, when the long days and twilight nights alone saved him from being destroyed, and, coasting back along the American shore, he discovered Hudson Strait, supposed then to be the long desired entrance into the Pacific. This exploit drew the attention of Walsingham, and by him Davis was presented to Burleigh, "who was also pleased ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... sunlight over the lawn. She remembered the dark, handsome face that seemed to belong to the passionate poems that girl had read, and the wild dreams she had dreamed in the still, old garden. In the hush of the summer twilight she heard again the rich voice that seemed to that other girl of Pinewood sweeter than the music of the verses, and felt the penetrating glance, that had thrilled the heart of that girl until her red cheek ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... the community in the spring twilight. The brothers and sisters had assembled to meet the convert, and to give a neighborly hand to the silent man who was to live by himself in a little, gray, shingled house down on Lonely Lake Road. It was a supreme moment to Athalia. She had expected ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... There is not much in common (thank God) between my garden with the grey-green English sky-line beyond it, and these mad visions of painted palaces huge, headless idols and monstrous solitudes of red or golden sand. Nevertheless (as I confessed to myself) I can fancy in such a stormy twilight some such smell of death and fear. The ruined sunset really looks like one of their ruined temples: a shattered heap of gold and green marble. A black flapping thing detaches itself from one of the sombre trees ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... of father might hesitate to risk his neck on such slight provocation, but he himself was overwrought with three days of peril, of desperate subterfuge and feverish alternations between joy and anguish. Now, in the mysterious twilight, the most terrible, as the most wonderful things seemed not merely possible but likely. It made it all the more terrible that Rufus should have to endure so much because he had taken a fancy to a silly kid who laughed like ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... a winsome country lass, So William on a brief vacation, The time more pleasantly to pass, Essayed flirtation. And while they strolled in twilight dim, As near the time for parting drew, Asked if she would have from him A "billet-doux." Now this simple maid of French knew naught, But doubting not 'twas something nice, Shyly she lifted her pretty head, Her rosy lips together drew, and ...
— Good Stories from The Ladies Home Journal • Various
... that you, Margaret? What was the matter back there? Do you know?" Leslie leaned far out of her car in the gathering twilight. ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... time-honoured name, are birds that lie up during the day in shady woods and issue forth at dusk on silent wing in order to hawk insects. The most characteristic feature of a nightjar is its enormous frog-like mouth; but it is not easy to make this out in the twilight or darkness, so that the observer has to rely on other features in order to recognise goatsuckers when he sees them on the wing, such as their long tail and wings, their curious silent fluttering flight, their dark plumage with white or buff in the wings and tail, their crepuscular and ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... there was a fresh crackling and breaking sound, and the skylight, through which he had meant to lead his men, was also darkened by the falling over it of a part of the great sail and the gaff; so that they were in twilight. ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... sour twilight crowds were battling for the latest papers, and knots of people were trying to make out the multitudes of appeals (See App. III, Sect. 6) and proclamations pasted in every flat place; from the Tsay-ee-kah, the Peasants' Soviets, the "moderate" Socialist parties, the Army Committees-threatening, ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... hour later, when she stood talking to the landlady on the hotel porch in the mellow twilight that seemed to rest on the land like a moonlit aura. For the moment ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... when the mind grows faster and the heart more slowly; then wakes the storm in the forest of human relation, tempest and lightning abroad, the soul enlarging by great bursts of vision and leaps of understanding and resolve; then floats up the mystic twilight eagerness, not unmingled with the dismay of compelled progress, when, bidding farewell to that which is behind, the soul is driven toward that which is before, grasping at it with all the hunger of the new birth. The story of God's universe lies in the growth of the individual soul. Kirsty's ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... men and women, and as to an execution the awe-struck crowd followed the two boys dumbly, curious to see if they surely would put their plan into execution. But none went farther than the outer doorway of the stairs, for it was already growing twilight. In absolute silence they watched the two foolhardy youths with their lives in their hands enter the terrible Keep, standing like a tower in the midst of the piles of stones that had once formed walls joining it with the mass of the castle beyond. ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... far than the saddest of illusions is the sordid reality of a scene indelibly imprinted on my mental vision. Memory takes me back to the twilight of a spring Sunday several years ago, when in the wake of a cluster of market folks we wandered into the old Cathedral of St. Denis. Deep in the sombre shadows of the crypt a light gleamed faintly ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... Twilight.—Parting day dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues with a new color as it gasps away, the last still loveliest, till 'tis gone, and ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... stinging heart-pang, I think of my ill-concealed and selfish weariness in our twilight walks and scented drives, of the look of hurt kindness on his face, at his inability to please me. I think of our return, of the day when he told me of the necessity for his voyage to Antigua, and of my own egotistic unwillingness to accompany him. I think of our parting, when I shed such plenteous ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... and, in order to this, I thought all my sermon over again in the afternoon sun as it shone slantingly through the stained window over Lord Eagleye's tomb, and in the failing light thereafter and the gathering dusk of the twilight, pacing up and down the solemn old place, hanging my thoughts here on a crocket, there on a corbel; now on the gable-point over which Weir's face would gaze next morning, and now on the aspiring peaks of the organ. I thus made the place a cell of thought and prayer. And when ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... sunset comes a cry, And in the twilight voices wailing past, Like wild-swans calling, "When we rest we die, And woe to them that ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... dropped into a chair, and the boys retired to the end of the piazza to make experiments on a large Newfoundland dog, while I, the happiest man alive, talked to the glorious woman before me, and enjoyed her radiant beauty. The twilight came and deepened, and our voices unconsciously dropped to lower tones, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... had gone slowly twenty yards down the path. The hermit had begun to twist the lid off his can, but he hid it again under his sacking robe. He could see her great eyes shining sadly through the twilight; but he stood inflexible in the doorway of his shack ...
— Options • O. Henry
... make a second apprizement at the court gate; and when the subjects' cattle come up many miles, lean and out of plight by reason of their travel, then they prize them anew at an abated price. By law, they ought to take between sun and sun; by abuse, they take by twilight and in the night time, a time well chosen for malefactors. By law, they ought not to take in the highways, (a place by her majesty's high prerogative protected, and by statute by special words excepted;) by abuse, they ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... to the door. For a moment he stood looking out at the twilight. He turned suddenly to the young man. "I'll tell you," said he. "There's something to you—I don't know what. Drop all this. Come on back. I'll think it over—I'll give you a ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... As in that twilight, superstitious age When all beyond the narrow grasp of mind Seem'd fraught with meanings of supernal kind, When e'en the learned philosophic sage, Wont with the stars thro' boundless space to range. Listen'd with rev'rence to the changeling's ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... twilight here in Canterbury, and we were sitting on the vine-shaded veranda of aunt Celia's lodging. Kitty's head was on my shoulder. There is something very queer about that; when Kitty's head is on my shoulder, I am not ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... managed to keep afloat without throwing overboard our cargo. The Indians were obliged to paddle with extreme slowness to avoid shipping water, as the edge of our prow was nearly level with the surface; but Cardozo was now persuaded to change his seat. The sun set, the quick twilight passed, and the moon soon after began to glimmer through the thick canopy of foliage. The prospect of being swamped in this hideous solitude was by no means pleasant, although I calculated on the chance of swimming to a tree and finding a nice snug place in the fork of some large bough ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... of two thousand feet, while over in the distance, as if across the canon, one can see the rolling foot-hills and lofty peaks of the Rockies, with Pike's Peak in the distance, snow-capped and colossal. It is late in the afternoon, and, as the scene progresses, the quick twilight of a canon, beautiful in its tints of purple and amber, becomes later pitch black, and the curtain goes down on an absolutely black stage. The cyclorama, or semi-cyclorama, must give the perspective of greater distances, ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... Maufant") and her sister sate by the fire knitting in the autumn twilight. Both were lovely; beautiful women in the typical style of island beauty, which not even the primness of their somewhat old-fashioned costume could wholly disguise. For their eyes were dark and sparkling, and their cheeks ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... with every appurtenance of almost Sybaritic luxury. The only light in the room was thrown upon the table by two purple-shaded electric lamps, and the servants who waited seemed to pass backwards and forwards like shadows in some mysterious twilight—even the faces of the three diners themselves were out of the little pool of light until they leaned forward. The dinner was chosen with taste and restraint, the wines were not only costly but rare. A watchful butler, ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the headquarters of the whole army—not of a single corps, but of an army. In the thickening twilight on the little square gorgeous staff officers came and went, afoot, on horseback and in automobiles; and through an open window we caught a glimpse of a splendid-looking general, sitting booted and sword-belted at a table in the Prince de Caraman-Chimay's library, with hunting ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... imagination faints in contemplating, and the light and the heat and the life that reach them are infinitesimally small. We shall be shifted into the orb that is nearest the sun; and oh! what a rapture of light and life and heat will come to our amazed spirits: 'I have set the Lord always before me.' Twilight though the light has been, I have tried to keep it. I shall be of the sons of light close to the Throne and shall see Thy face. I shall be satisfied when I wake out of this sleep ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... few war parties had ever traveled. The miles fell swiftly behind them, no one spoke, they heard nothing but the regular breathing of one another, and Henry did not yet see the drops of perspiration on the bare brown back in front of him. The sun passed far down the western arch. Shadowy twilight was already creeping up, the distant waves of the forest were clothed in darkening mists, but they did not stop. Anue gave no word, and Timmendiquas, for the time, would wait ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... early in the forenoon when they stepped ashore and stood upon the old levee. The splendid life of the Mississippi steamboat is fading, but here the glow lingers, the twilight at the close of a fervid day. No longer are seen the gilded names of famous competitors, "The Lee," "The Natchez," but unheralded boats are numerous, and the deck-hands' chorus comes with a swell over the water, and the wharf is ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... one arm, grasped Lila with the other, and went skipping after the rest of the seniors over the lawn to their class tree. She dragged them under its spreading branches to the centre of the throng that had gathered in the June twilight. Berta was already there, mounted on a small platform that had been built against the trunk in preparation for the morrow's ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... young Marc Dupre sang as he fumbled at a canoe awaiting the morn when he was to set off up-stream for any word that he might pick up of the coming of the Nakonkirhirinons. There was no moon and the twilight had deepened softly, covering the post with a soft mantle of dreams, when there was a step on the hard earth and the factor turned sharply to behold a little figure in a red kirtle, its curly head hanging a bit as ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... principles of their adversaries. To escape from each other, they wandered through many a dark and devious thicket, till they were astonished by the horrid phantoms of Cerinthus and Apollinaris, who guarded the opposite issues of the theological labyrinth. As soon as they beheld the twilight of sense and heresy, they started, measured back their steps, and were again involved in the gloom of impenetrable orthodoxy. To purge themselves from the guilt or reproach of damnable error, they disavowed their consequences, explained their principles, excused their indiscretions, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... promise touching the needle-work for Mrs Warton. And then the scene changed altogether, and I was walking in the gayest spirits, whistling and singing through Camden town on my way to their snug lodgings in the vale of Hampstead heath—and the time is twilight. And first I meet the children, neatly dressed, clean, and wholesome looking, jumping and leaping about the heather at no particular sport, but in the very joy and healthiness of their young blood—and they catch sight of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... them how to scent and track the deer. And what are they given in exchange for all this?" asked the Doctor, stopping in his walk and growing all red and angry—"What are they given in exchange for the glory of an African sunrise, for the twilight breeze whispering through the palms, for the green shade of the matted, tangled vines, for the cool, big-starred nights of the desert, for the patter of the waterfall after a hard day's hunt? What, I ask you, are they given in exchange for THESE? Why, a bare cage with iron bars; an ugly piece ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... Enoch yearn'd to see her face again; 'If I might look on her sweet face gain And know that she is happy.' So the thought Haunted and harass'd him, and drove him forth, At evening when the dull November day Was growing duller twilight, to the hill. There he sat down gazing on all below; There did a thousand memories roll upon him, Unspeakable for sadness. By and by The ruddy square of comfortable light, Far-blazing from the rear of Philip's house, Allured him, as the beacon-blaze allures ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... February twilight was closing in upon them when they left the lifted bridge. They had been there long, yet as they turned to go, Helen gave one backward look. There, spread away across the stricken plain, she saw for the last time the prostrate thing which yesterday had been the living city; and ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... star rises heliacally when it first becomes visible in the morning, after having been hidden in the sun's rays; and it sets heliacally when it is first lost in the evening twilight, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... Sir, when our commoners are barely able by the glimmer of their own twilight understandings to scrawl a frank, and when lords are what gentlemen would be ashamed to be, to whom shall a sinking country call for help? To the independent country gentleman. To him who has too deep a stake in his country ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Giant turned his fatal glass And twilight on the landscape closed her wings; Far to Asturian hills the war-sounds pass, And in their stead rebeck or timbrel rings; And to the sound the bell-decked dancer springs, Bazars resound as when their marts are met, In tourney ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... while my mind rebuilt and shifted the scenes of the long, long drama in which Old Pine had played his part, and of which he had given us but a few fragmentary records. I lingered there dreaming until twilight. I thought of the cycles during which he had stood patient in his appointed place, and my imagination busied itself with the countless experiences that had been recorded, and the scenes and pageants ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... Not until early twilight came with the deep shadows of the western mountains, and the Nome was churning slowly back through the narrow water-trails to the open Pacific, did the significance of that afternoon fully impress itself upon Alan. For hours he had surrendered himself to an impulse which he ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... I entered the room where this Twilight of the Gods was drawing to an end, and saw an astounding spectacle. The Duchess of Broadfield and Princess Uriassof were attempting to pack their own trunks. Their lack of experience was only too conspicuous. In every corner there lay hats which had been crushed by their clumsy attempts; ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... less, have such a disposition, and seek to satisfy this noble want in various ways. But as the sublime is easily produced by twilight and night, when objects are blended, it is, on the other hand, scared away by the day, which separates and sunders every thing; and so must it also be destroyed by every increase of cultivation, if it be not fortunate enough to take refuge with the beautiful, and unite itself closely with it, whereby ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
