"Unearthly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with quick, uneven steps up and down the room. Matravers forgot to drink his coffee. He was watching her with a curious sense of emotional excitement. The little chamber was full of half lights and shadows, and there seemed to him something almost unearthly about this woman with her soft grey gown and marble face. He was stirred by her presence in a new way. The rustle of her silken skirts as she swept in and out of the dim light, the delicate whiteness of her arms and throat, the flashing of a single diamond in her dark coiled hair,—these seemed ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... returned for a few minutes, as if a cover had been clapped upon the sky, and then, again, the murk would roll off, and the reddish gleam would reappear. These swift alternations of impenetrable gloom and unearthly light shook the hearts of the dumfounded statesmen even more than the roar ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... overtook me and passed on. One of them dropped this handkerchief, which I picked up. I hastened after her to restore it, but before I could overtake them they had rung the bell at your door and were already in the house. I did not like to ring at such an unearthly hour for fear of disturbing you. Yesterday I was so busy I couldn't come; however, here I am at last, and here's the handkerchief." So saying, Lecoq laid the handkerchief on the table, and turned as if to go, ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... music after the polyphonists. By Church music I mean music written for the Church, not necessarily religious music. The passage at "Ego cubui et dormivi" is sublime, Purcell's discords creating an atmosphere of strange beauty, almost unearthly, and that yields to the unspeakable tenderness of the naive phrase at the words, "Quia Jehovah sustentat me." The Te Deum was until recently known only by Dr. Boyce's perversion. Dr. Boyce is reputed to have been an estimable ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... tottered to his feet. Complete darkness had come. There was an unearthly silence. Then a moan, then a howl and a shriek arose which reached from group to group, from house to house, from square to forest. Human and animal cries blended in ...
— A Lost Hero • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and Herbert D. Ward
... from one to the other. The strangeness of the encounter was in the mind of each: that the years had slipped away and that Kirkwood was defending her from the man for whom she had abandoned him. An unearthly quiet lay upon the garden. Children's voices rose faintly on the silvery April night from the grounds beyond. Far away, beyond the station, a locomotive puffed slowly on a steep grade. The noises of the town seemed eerily ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... their motions. It was a singular thing to behold the passage of the little body of cavalry down the rocky road which led from the castle, unattended with the noise which we are disposed to consider as inseparable from the motions of horse, the absence of which seemed to give a peculiar and almost an unearthly appearance to the cavalcade. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 373, Supplementary Number • Various
... too, which he said constantly—for he carried his beads loose in his trousers' pockets that he might tell them as he walked the streets—transformed themselves into coronals of flowers of such vague unearthly texture that they seemed to him as hueless and odourless as they were nameless. He offered up each of his three daily chaplets that his soul might grow strong in each of the three theological virtues, in faith in the Father Who had created him, in hope ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... change to them to commence regular habits, to run when they heard the bell ring, and do all that they were told; and some of them began to pine under a sense of captivity. Some of them, when home-sick, seemed to lose all control over themselves, and made an unearthly noise; others would watch their opportunity and run away. In the next chapter we shall tell about three run-away boys, and their capture after ten days' absence. On the whole, however, the children seemed to be wonderfully contented and happy, and all went merrily and cheerfully ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... to admit a man's head through the aperture. Here we made Tom a comfortable bed on the floor, and did the best we could to nurse him through his sickness. His long, thin face, emaciated with disease, and surrounded by huge black whiskers, and a beard of a week's growth, looked perfectly unearthly. He had only to stare at the baby to frighten her ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... those who waited outside as Vengeance enthroned, expectation began to take on a creepy quality. The besiegers were preparing against themselves a host, not of men, but of frightful spectres, of famished maniacs, of unearthly ghouls, who would clutch and tear with claws any man that stood between them and a morsel of food. And the fury of desperation sharpened with each succeeding irony ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... new eruption and then spout whole rivers of boiling water. In the Upper Geyser Basin the effect is very impressive, particularly upon a cool morning. The clouds of steam and the throbbing or roaring geysers lend to the region a weird and unearthly aspect. ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... terms:—had led his mercenaries against this important town. He had found one of its gates somewhat insecurely guarded, placed a mortar under it at night, and occupied a neighbouring pig-stye with a number of his men, who by chasing, maltreating, and slaughtering the swine, had raised an unearthly din, sufficient to drown the martial operations at the gate. In brief, the place was easily mastered, and taken possession of by Martin, in the name of the deposed elector, Gebhard Truchsess—the first stroke of good fortune which had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of ghosts. Except for the few hours at midday these people moved in the gloom and shadow of a nether world. The long twilight was succeeded by longer night, with its burnished stars, its dead moon, its unearthly aurora. On the fresh snow were the tracks of creatures, but in the flesh they glided almost invisible. The ptarmigan's [Footnote: Ptarmigan: a species of grouse that is brown in summer but turns white, or nearly ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... other way around. These Tibetans, through the injection of this unearthly blood, deteriorated slightly physically, lost the "soul" parts of their nature entirely, ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... horses became more and more dishevelled, the sweat streamed over their flanks, and their breath came through their nostrils hard and fast. But when he found them slacking pace, the guide reanimated them by uttering a strange, gutteral, unearthly cry, and the gallop recommenced with fury. At last the whirlwind race ceased; a huge black mass pierced through with many bright points of light suddenly rose before us, the hoofs of our horses echoed louder upon a strong wooden drawbridge, and we rode under a great ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... centres of each end of the stone chamber a colossus towered in its silent and unearthly grandeur. That to the right was a statue of Osiris, judge of the souls of the dead, seated on his judgment-seat, and holding in his hand the source and the bent-headed sceptre. Facing him at the other end of the hall was the effigy of the mighty Ramses, his broad brow encircled ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... the flat mangold field across the road. The green leaves had the cold glitter of wet, pointed metal. To the north-east a dead smear of dawn. The brougham didn't look like itself, standing still in that unearthly light. As if it were taking part in a funeral, the funeral of some dreadful death. She put on her dressing-gown and waited, looking out. She had to look. Downstairs the hall clock ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... impression is that one has been reading the "Arabian Nights," and that here is one of those fairy palaces which will fly off, or gradually fade away, or sink bodily through the water. Its solemn isolation, its unearthly color, and its flamelike outline ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... Fifine's trembling finger, the closing sentence was being uttered, when a wild flash of greenish lightning crossed the little window near them, filling the room with its lurid glare, lending a most unearthly appearance to the pallid faces of the two men before her. A horrible feeling came over her, but it did not last long. As the flash disappeared, a gush of wind entered a broken pane, the candle went blank out before her stupid gaze, and she forgot everything in that one instant, for a merciful ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... foes. Such flowers as are possessed of keen energy, as are painful to the touch, as grow on trees and plants having thorns, and as are either bloody-red or black, should be offered to (evil) spirits and unearthly beings. Such flowers as gladden the mind and heart, as are very agreeable when pressed, and as are of beautiful form, have been said, O lord, to be worthy of being offered to human beings. Such flowers ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... from the Tower. Again—Loon Lake. Can you imagine two more lonesome wailing words to make a picture with? But—Cohocton. How oddly right my absurd instinct had been about that—and, shall we ever forget the unearthly beauty of the evening which brought us at dark to the quaint little operatic-looking village, deep and snug among the solemn, ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... sign, Our plants then burgeon, and each wears anew His wonted colours, ere the sun have yok'd Beneath another star his flamy steeds; Thus putting forth a hue, more faint than rose, And deeper than the violet, was renew'd The plant, erewhile in all its branches bare. Unearthly was the hymn, which then arose. I understood it not, nor to the end Endur'd the harmony. Had I the skill To pencil forth, how clos'd th' unpitying eyes Slumb'ring, when Syrinx warbled, (eyes that paid So dearly for their watching,) then ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... gratitude, of intense satisfaction, transfigured the clay for the last time. It seemed as if the departing soul stood still to listen. He was perfectly quiet until she ceased speaking; then, in a strange, unearthly tone, he uttered one word, "Happy." It was the last word that ever parted his lips. Between shores he lingered until the next daybreak, and then the loving watchers saw that the pallid wintry light ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... inspired such thoughts in such language. Other divines,—Donne and Jeremy Taylor for instance,—have converted their worldly gifts, and applied them to holy ends; but here the gifts themselves seem unearthly. ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... an unearthly hour of a March morning and the first thing I knew of it somebody was shouting, "Venezia!" and I was startled from a sound sleep, and porters were scrambling for our bags, and we were stumbling after them, ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... beautiful deed,—fresh from the pure fount of maternal piety! The Hebrew mother consecrating her first-born child to the Temple-service,—dedicating him to the God who gave him! What visions of unearthly glory must have been before her, as she led her little boy before the altar of the "King of kings!" Happy mother! thou hast long since gone to thy great reward. And happy child! to be led by such a mother. Ye ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... so many other men she knew, do a mean thing. He couldn't. Finally Lester rose and excused himself. He and Jennie were going farther up the Nile in the morning—toward Karnak and Thebes and the water-washed temples at Phylae. They would have to start at an unearthly early hour, and he must get ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... open portal, bore it up the echoing aisle, Let it down before the altar, where the lights burned clear the while. When, oh, hark; the wondrous organ of itself began to play Strains of rare, unearthly sweetness never heard until ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... watch over his head, he caught sight of the unearthly hour. 'A quarter to two? Gentleman downstairs? Can't be that infernal apothecary who broke 's engagement to dine with me last night? By George, if it is I'll souse him; I'll drench him from head to heel as though the rascal 'd ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... their number who had entered the control building now stood shivering outside it, unable to force themselves inside again. There was a vast, detached stillness about the spaceport. It seemed the more unearthly because of the thin music of wind in the landing ...
— The Hate Disease • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... louder, and out of the gloom the ghosts came flocking, youths and maidens cut off in their bloom, old men with all their burden of sorrow, and warriors slain in battle, still wearing the bloodstained armour.[1] With a wild unearthly cry they came crowding to the trench, eager to drink of the blood. But Odysseus, though quaking with fear, stood his ground firmly, and held his drawn sword over the trench to keep off the multitude, until he had seen and spoken ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... it, seeing and not seeing. Outside, the river, just filmed with ice, shone under the moon; over it bent the trees, laden with hoar-frost. Was that a heron, rising for an instant, beyond the bridge, in the unearthly blue? ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sat down in a nook, though it was a very hot one, and made a sketch or two of the appearance of the crater. But I feel that it is quite beyond my power either by pen or pencil, to convey an idea of the weird unearthly aspect which the funnel-shaped crater of Vesuvius presented at that time. An eruption of unusual violence had occurred shortly before I saw it. Great rounded blocks of lava had been thrown high into the air again and again, and had fallen back into ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... again as fast as possible, heedless of idols and all other antiquities, seized a cigarito from the hand of the astonished prefect, who was wisely smoking at the entrance, lighted it, and inhaled the smoke, which seemed more fragrant than violets, after that stifling and most unearthly odour. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... slowly arose from behind the clouds, threw around streams of chilling, unearthly light, which served to illumine countenances still more chilling and unearthly. Strange black eyes, wildly rolling under their darksome covering, were all intensely gazing on her; and horrid grins, which were peculiar to those features, served to increase ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... on by a Frenchman in gaily fringed hunting-shirt, whose gorget showed him to be an officer. There was sharp firing on both sides at first. Several of the enemy fell; among them their leader; but a murderous fire broke out from among trees and a ravine on the right, and the woods resounded with unearthly whoops and yellings. The Indian rifle was at work, levelled by unseen hands. Most of the grenadiers and many of the pioneers were shot down. The survivors were driven ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... of living and moving. He never had much chance to run. You couldn't run by yourself for nothing. People stared or were annoyed when you bumped against them. But now there was something to run for. There was no one to see or hear him in the deserted Grove, and with each bound he let out an unearthly, ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... in fact to start upon in its workings. If it creates a world entirely out of its own consciousness, that world may be one of extreme beauty and splendour, but it is most unlikely that it will present any verisimilitude to actual life. It will be either vague and shadowy, or else so grandiose and unearthly in its magnificence as to have no point of connection with ordinary terrestrial life. But it is exactly here that the realism of the Homeric world strikes the student. It is not vague—on the contrary, ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... preceded it; it was surrounded by special attendants, and was followed by detachments of night-patrols on foot and mounted. The size and shape of this structure, which was escorted with such pomp and precaution—the silence that prevailed—the unearthly hour, all helped to give an air of mystery to the proceedings. At last, having passed through the principal thoroughfares, it arrived at the Champ de Mars, where it was placed in an ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... Never-ending Quest, And Minstrel of the Unfulfilled Desire; For ever tuning thy frail earthly lyre To some unearthly music, and possessed With painful passionate longing to invest The golden dream of Love's immortal fire With mortal robes of beautiful attire, And fold perfection to ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... true, for by that time the apple will gleam with an unearthly brightness, enhanced and burnished by all the kind thoughts that have surrounded it for ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... yowling of Beerjand cats. Several of these animals are paying their feline compliments to the moon from different roofs and walls hard by, and their utterances strike my unaccustomed (unaccustomed to the Beerjand variety of cat-music) ears as about the most unearthly ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... bending his body toward the earth with which it was soon to mingle; the ripe and perfect wheat nodded lower and lower day by day, as the Angel of the Sickle delayed; but his noble face wore that blessed and marvellous calm, that unearthly peace which generally comes some hours after death, when all traces of temporal passions and woes ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... that slender, ghostly figure that haunted the house with its soft movements and tender singing. Lastly, he remembered his strange conviction that somewhere in the great building, possibly in his own corridor, there were other occupants, other life, Beings of unearthly scale waiting the given moment to appear, ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... splendid," I acknowledged. "I admire the quiet man of power, though I confess that such quietness under stress seems to me almost unearthly and beyond human. I can't conceive of myself acting that way, and I am confident that I was suffering more while that poor devil was in the water than all the rest of the onlookers ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... into unity by the master brain, which had once been in the body of Master Scientist Cram. A voice out of nothingness; a voice from what seemed so clearly to be the dead. To Hawk Carse, man of action, it was unearthly; it was a miracle the fact of which he could not question, but which he could not hope to understand. And well might it have been unearthly to anyone. ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... sun told that it lacked but an hour of sunset, and the clouds seemed to be thickening rather than dispersing, the Black Beaver gave a long and hideous howl. His wife and daughter shuddered when they heard it, as would any one, for a more unearthly and discordant cry was never uttered by man or beast; but they had double reason to shudder; it was the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... all Dotty's little life had she been in such a strait as this. She cried so loud that her voice was heard above the storm, in unearthly shrieks. She didn't want to die! O, it was so nice to be alive! She would as lief have the sore throat all the time, if she might only be alive. She said not a word, but the thoughts flew through her mind like a flock of startled swallows,—not one after another, but all together; and so fast ...
— Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's • Sophie May
... I neared the place, I heard the strangest sound coming from the rocks. It was a deep muffled groaning, so eerie and unearthly that for the moment I stood and shivered. Then I remembered my river of yesterday. It must be above this place that it descended into the earth, and in the hush of dawn the sound was naturally louder. No wonder ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... peevishness, the querulous and stinging irritations of want, came not to that affectionate and kindly heart; nor could all those biting and bitter evils of fate which turn the love that is born of luxury into rancour and gall scathe the beautiful and holy passion which had knit into one those two unearthly natures. They rather clung the closer to each other, as all things in heaven and earth spoke in tempest or in gloom around them, and coined their sorrows into endearment, and their looks into smiles, and strove each from the depth of despair ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... said Trottle thinks it best not to report, seeing that the old hypocrite, getting next door to light-headed at the golden prospect before her, took such liberties with unearthly names and persons which ought never to have approached her lips, and rained down such an awful shower of blessings on Trottle's head, that his hair almost stood on end to hear her. He went on down-stairs as fast as his feet would ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... howling dervishes; all our religion consisted in howling like jackals or hyenas, with all our might, until we fell down in real or pretended convulsions. My howl was considered as the most appalling and unearthly that was ever heard; and, of course, my sanctity was increased in proportion. We were on our way to Scutari, where was our real place of residence, and only lodged here and there on our journey to fleece those who were piously disposed. ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... any opening between the hostile shields or above them. The comrades behind wedge in the front ranks closer and closer. Men are crushed to death, probably without a wound, just by this hellish impact. The shouts and yells emitted are deafening. There is an unearthly clashing of steel weapons on bronze armor. Every now and then a shrill, sharp cry tells where a soldier has been stabbed, and has gone down in the press, probably trampled to death instantly. In this way the two writhing, thrusting phalanxes ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... Roop appeared throned among his sheriffs, the witnesses, and spectators, and wearing upon his face a solemnity so awe-inspiring that some of his fellow-conspirators had misgivings that maybe he had not comprehended, after all, that this was merely a joke. An unearthly stillness prevailed, for at the slightest noise the judge uttered ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... middle stature, slender, and, before years had subdued her physical strength, straight as an arrow. Her complexion was fair, and her features, rather pointed than full, were regular and well formed. The eyes, of light blue, generally wore a calm and gentle expression, but kindled with an unearthly light when conversing on divine subjects. Then her whole soul flashed in her countenance, and her features, lit as with sunshine, indicated how deeply her spirit had drank of that "stream which maketh glad the city of God." Her hair, which in youth was of a rich auburn, turned grey at the early ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... of an emotion too thick and close for utterance, they wandered back again to the enchanted garden where the band had played for them. The garden was silent, too. The bandstand was empty, black, unearthly as if haunted by some thin ghost of passionate sound; and empty, row after row of seats in the great parterre, except for a few couples who sat leaning to each other, hand in hand, finding a happy solitude in that ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... other condition of mind than that promising sleep, and really without closing my eyes, except for a moment or two at a time, during the night which followed. When I did attempt to force myself into slumber, a red spectre stood continually before me, an unearthly light seemed to sear my covered eyeballs, and I awoke with a start. Days passed before I sufficiently wore away the impression to be comfortable, and at least two or three weeks before my rest became again ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... Each dial-marked leaf and flower-bell Wherewith in every lonesome dell Time to himself his hours doth tell; All tree-sounds, rustlings of pine-cones, Wind-sighings, doves' melodious moans, And night's unearthly under-tones; All placid lakes and waveless deeps, All cool reposing mountain-steeps, Vale-calms and tranquil lotos-sleeps; — [161] Yea, all fair forms, and sounds, and lights, And warmths, and mysteries, and mights, Of Nature's utmost depths and heights, — These doth my timid tongue present, ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... wailing cry, to which I had no hope of obtaining any answer, save from the echoes around, dulled as the sound might be by the thickened air. To my surprise I heard a cry—almost as long, as wild as mine—so wild that it seemed unearthly, and I almost thought it must be the voice of some of the mocking spirits of the Fells, about whom I had heard so many tales. My heart suddenly began to beat fast and loud. I could not reply for a minute or two. I nearly fancied I had lost the power of utterance. Just at this moment a dog ...
— The Half-Brothers • Elizabeth Gaskell
... reached his home. He pounded sharply on the door; but his good wife, who never retired without him, failed to answer the summons. So, after repeated knocks, Guir forced the door and entered. All was dark. An unearthly stillness pervaded the air, and a horrid suspicion forced itself upon him while groping his way forward to secure a light. Finding the chimney, he raked together a few coals, which he blew into a flame, and then, with trembling hands, lighted the ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... like a mortal child. An unearthly beauty was in its face; wondrous precocious signs marked it from its birth. Its baby-speech was very wisdom. Its baby-smile was full of thought. The mother read her olden soul—the pure soul that was hers of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... of the night, but seldom all night; and even should one have the capacity to do so, his companions in durance would wake him with a shout or a song or a curse or the kicking of a door. A noisy and chaotic medley frequently continued without interruption for hours at a time. Noise, unearthly noise, was the poetic license allowed the occupants of these cells. I spent several days and nights in one or another of them, and I question whether I averaged more than two or three hours' sleep a night during that time. Seldom did the regular attendants ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... rising out of the shadows, all golden amid floating mists, was a mighty mountain crest, higher than all around. The sun-rays lighted up its wondrous peaks. The glory of it was unearthly, almost more than the eye ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... was extraordinary. What the dickens was it? A vision of exquisite and unearthly and brilliantly coloured beauty seemed to be before his eyes. Islands, all white and green and in a sea of terrific blue.... And music, the thin note of distant trumpets.... Amazing! He read on. "Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung! Eternal Summer gilds them yet." Terrific, but ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... the dell, if dell it was, mingled with many other strange and fierce sounds. Cuthbert rose to his feet and crept forward with a beating heart, and as he did so he heard a shout of demoniacal laughter which chilled the very blood in his veins, and seemed to raise the hair upon his head, so unearthly ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... not surprised that little Giles came running back to her, producing unearthly notes on the instrument, and telling her that father had taken the gipsy into his workshop, and said they would teach him bird's songs by ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... two roads, his throbbing head bent to his knees. The clouds in the west glowed with a fierce purple, when he started up at last. He started up and walked, swiftly and with firm step, towards Walkherd Lodge. The clouds in the west seemed to glow with an unearthly light. ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... violin. From that grinding lilt, with which the blind man, seeking pence, accompanies the beat of paddle wheels across the ferry, there is surely a difference rather of kind than of degree to that unearthly voice of singing that bewails and praises the destiny of man at the touch of the true virtuoso. Even that you may perhaps enjoy; and if you do so you will own it impossible to enjoy it more keenly than here, im Schnee der Alpen. A hyacinth in a ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... into the moonlight, came the troop of Phantom Cats. This time they were led by a fierce, black Tomcat. As they came nearer they chanted with unearthly screeches:— ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... not exist for his eyes. The change from the agitation, the passions and the dangers, from the sights and sounds of the shore, was so complete that it would have resembled death had it not been for the survival of his thoughts. In this foretaste of eternal peace they floated vivid and light, like unearthly clear dreams of earthly things that may haunt the souls freed by death from the misty atmosphere of regrets and hopes. Decoud shook himself, shuddered a bit, though the air that drifted past him was warm. He had the strangest sensation of his ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... length, gazing down into her upturned face where the dusk and the moon-fire met and blended in a radiance of unearthly beauty, "is it not wonderful that, all unwittingly and unconscious of each other's existence, we have been brought together from the ends of the earth?" She was about to reply when a voice, close at hand, cut her short. It ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... dissuade her. She had once befriended some adepts, who, in return, had taught her things about the soul she had better have left unlearned. At various times while with her I had seen strange things happen, but I never realized what unearthly powers were in her until that night in Paris. We were returning from a drive in the Bois; it was about ten o'clock, and the city lay beautiful around us as Paris looks on a perfect summer's night. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... I was stupid. This is all too big and great for such smallness." She indicated the coming of the unearthly light. ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... slaves often feel that there is no just God for the poor African? Nay, verily; and were it not for the comforting and sustaining influence that these poor, illiterate and suffering creatures feel as coming from an unearthly source, they would in their ignorance all become infidels. To me, that beautiful Sabbath morning was clouded in midnight darkness, and I retired to ponder on ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... if he had been I could scarcely have seen him; I could see nothing but the void expanse of the Flat, or, looking down, the broad river of mist that rolled through the valley, on the other side of which twinkled a few cottage lights, like unearthly beacons from the farthest ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... in the hills there was no such unearthly stillness reigning. Those restless wood-dwellers, that never sleep, were sending startling gruesome calls to each other. Bats were flapping and whirling and darting hither and thither; the gliding serpent making quick rustle amid the dry, ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... a lurid flash in the sky to northward. Two thousand feet up and a mile away, the unearthly green blaze of a hexynitrate explosion lit the whole earth ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... rays of the setting sun, streaming brightly over the waters, gild with an unearthly glare the whirling clouds of smoke, that rising towards the blue sky, grow fainter and fainter until they are lost in the clear ether. The sea no longer dances and flashes in the red light, as if exulting with the glee of fiends at the mortal agony ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... whole aspect of the habitable globe. Without and above it roars the earthquaking voice of the terrible explosions; through the drifts of dbris glimpses are caught of the glaring and burning monster; while through all and over all is an unearthly heat, under which rivers, ponds, lakes, springs, ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... the steam man was gaining steadily upon him, while to add variety to the scene, Johnny kept up the unearthly shrieking of the nose-whistle of the giant. It was difficult to tell which sounded the most ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... colour, the stars were distinctly perceptible through them. This magnificent spectacle continued for a full hour with ever-increasing brilliancy, suffusing sea and land with a quivering glow of prismatic light, and imparting an aspect of magic, unearthly, indescribable beauty to the scene. Then the colours gradually faded, the flashes became more feeble, and the darting rays ever shorter and shorter, until they finally faded completely away, to be succeeded ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... policeman on duty afterwards told how he had heard her muttering to herself, and that he thought he caught the words, "These eyes! These eyes! They have undone me! They have undone me!" Soon afterwards he heard a wild, unearthly shriek that froze his blood. He rushed into the cell, and there, horrible, bleeding.... But I dare not describe ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... the ground. In the middle distance the flames pursue a flying mob of terrified women clutching their infants, and men trying to protect them; while in the foreground old men, youths, and children, are struck down in heaps, stopping their ears, and gazing up in panic at the unearthly apparition. ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... in a much worse plight; for, whereas Mrs Major Negus had only swallowed a lot of sea-water and had been only nearly frightened to death, Mr Lathrope's sallow face was so unearthly pale that Mr Meldrum was certain he had received some severe injury; as he was tightly jammed between his bunk and the washing-stand, while a heavy packing-case had tumbled out of the top berth on to one of his shoulders, ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... brought Babbie to him at such an hour; yet when he left his mother's room it was to stand motionless on the stair, waiting for a silence in the manse that would not come. A house is never still in darkness to those who listen intently; there is a whispering in distant chambers, an unearthly hand presses the snib of the window, the latch rises. Ghosts were created when the first man woke in ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... mind the general tendency of the natural man to multiply to himself the objects of religious worship, and to create, by the help of superstition, and the delusive workings of the imagination, a variety of unearthly beings whose wrath he must appease, or whose favour he may conciliate; when I reflect how great is the temptation in unenlightened or fraudulent teachers to accommodate the dictates of truth to the ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... sever this blackness in twain and reveal its hidden and awful secrets? But no; there was no such friendly or avenging glare; the brooding skies lay over the sombre valleys, and the gloomy phantasmagoria slowly changed and changed in that unearthly twilight, as the mists and the wind and the rain transformed the solid hills and the straths into intermingling vapors and visions. A spectral world, unreal, and yet terrible; apparently voiceless and tenantless; ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... poet, "if the barbarians that came from the north stood dumb with amazement to behold the magnificence of Rome, thinking they saw unearthly greatness in the Lateran, what must I have thought, who had thus come from human to divine, from time to eternity, from the people of Florence to beings just ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... we spake little, for night was come upon us very still and dark save for a glitter of stars, by whose unearthly light all things took on strange shapes, and our solitude seemed but the more profound ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... An unearthly twilight, not unlike that dim greenish luminescence which filters through emerald panes in the high nave of a great cathedral, lay upon the earth. The forms of the mourning women were strangely magnified in the curious semi-luminance and, as their ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... getting up at such unearthly hours!" cried Patsy cheerfully. "But I don't mind it in the least, Beth; ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... a revolutionary age. He is the poet of hope, as Wordsworth is the poet of wisdom. He has been charged with being intangible and unearthly, but he is so only in the sense in which the future is intangible and unearthly. He is no more unearthly than the skylark or the rainbow or the dawn. His world, indeed, is a universe of skylarks and rainbows and ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... minutes. And as she gazed, it seemed as if the strange being in the trench had dug his way up from the lower parts of the earth, bringing her secret with him, and come to ask her questions. What an earthy yet unearthly look he had! Almost for the moment she believed the ancient rumors of other races than those of mankind, that shared the earth with them, but led such differently conditioned lives, that, in the course of ages, only a scanty few of the unblending ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... gazed as though he had been haunted. His unconscious face reflected the passing expressions of scorn, of despair, of resolution—reflected them in turn, as a magic mirror would reflect the gliding passage of unearthly shapes. He lived surrounded by deceitful ghosts, by austere shades. "Oh! nonsense, my dear fellow," I began. He had a movement of impatience. "You don't seem to understand," he said incisively; then looking at me without a wink, "I may have jumped, ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... tomahawk from the wall, drape himself in an Indian blanket, and march up and down the room roaring out terrific battle-cries. Three minutes later, Minor and Bolton had followed his example, and marched solemnly behind him, brandishing their weapons and making unearthly noises. Mary, from her chair by the hearth, watched them curiously. At first it was merely the exuberant spirits of their release and the unaccustomed altitude that inspired them, but their countenances grew more and more ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... surrounded by myriads of small craft I forget not to sing; Nor the comet that came unannounced out of the north flaring in heaven, Nor the strange huge meteor-procession dazzling and clear shooting over our heads, (A moment, a moment long it sail'd its balls of unearthly light over our heads, Then departed, dropt in the night, and was gone;) Of such, and fitful as they, I sing—with gleams from them would gleam and patch these chants, Your chants, O year all mottled with evil and good—year of forebodings! Year of comets and meteors transient ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... become a chaos. Bear in mind the great extent and variety of the objects which come under the care of the librarian, all of which are to be classified and reduced to order. These include not only books upon every earthly subject (and very many upon unearthly ones) but a possibly wide range of newspapers and periodicals, a great mass of miscellaneous pamphlets, sometimes of maps and charts, of manuscripts and broadsides, and frequently collections of engravings, photographs, and other pictures, all of ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... up out of reach and sight, he puts on a tragical face, and complains that it is a base and soulless world. At this moment, I doubt not, he is exacting, that under the masks of a Pantaloon and a Pulcinello there should be a heart glowing with unearthly desires and ideal aspirations, and that Harlequin should out moralise Hamlet upon the nothingness of sublunary things; and should it not be so, the dew will rise into his eyes, and he will turn his back on the ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... about it. Suddenly, however, something happened about which she could not be in the least uncertain. Above Olive's room was a chamber appropriated to the use of bachelor visitors, and from the window of this room now burst upon the night a wild, unearthly chant. It was a song with words but without music, and the voice in which it was shot out into the darkness was harsh, was shrill, was insolently blatant. And ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... pale while I was speaking, and at moments her grey eyes widened with the unearthly horror of the thing; but never a tremour touched her, nor did lid or lips ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... below had been piped down, and had turned in; and silence reigned on board, and on the face of the ocean around us. It had been my watch on deck, and I was just about being relieved, when the silence was broken by a loud, unearthly cry; and the carpenter rushed on deck in his shirt, his hair standing on end, and his eyeballs starting from their sockets. Had not several men laid hold of him, I believe he would have thrown himself overboard. He was carried back to his cabin, and the doctor was summoned. All Chissel ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... thigh-bone and his skull, and ruefully began to thump the latter with the former, in dismal expectation of the things that were to come. But the spell seemed to have lost its potency. Nothing more unearthly than a bat presented itself, and Ananda was beginning to think that he might as well desist when his reflections were diverted by the apparition of a tall and grave personage, wearing a sad-coloured robe, and carrying a long wand, who ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... vision is clearer, even in worldly matters, than the eyes of those can be who have lived among the fumes and vapours that rise in these low grounds, unless the eyes be washed day by day in the spring of truth, and anointed with unearthly ointment. The right and the wrong were the two things that presented themselves to my view; and oh, my sorrow and heartbreak was, that papa was in the wrong. I could not believe it, and yet I could not get rid of it. There were oppressors and oppressed ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the three-fold walls the moon's unearthly splendor made visible a vast confusion of crumbling cornices, blank walls, turrets, domes, and towers, the gnarled limbs of dead trees, the luxuriant dark foliage of banian and pepal, palm and acacia. But nothing moved and there was not a light to be seen. ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... took almost superhuman effort to keep my fingers going; in fact, I believe I sometimes did so while dozing. During such moments this man sitting there so mysteriously silent, almost hid in a cloud of heavy-scented smoke, filled me with a sort of unearthly terror. He seemed to be some grim, mute, but relentless tyrant, possessing over me a supernatural power which he used to drive me on mercilessly to exhaustion. But these feelings came very rarely; besides, he paid ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... has lost in the game of love. And yet, what right had he to cherish even this wholesome anger against his rival when the maid had chosen of her own free will? As well hold grudge to the great Power whose wisdom had given the man such marvellous beauty. As he lay in the darkness listening to the unearthly noises he worked ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... reading, and sometimes revolving the anxious cares which were always pressing upon his mind. One night he was thus alone in his tent, with a small lamp burning before him, sitting lost in thought, when he suddenly heard a movement as of some one entering the tent. He looked up, and saw a strange, unearthly, and monstrous shape, which appeared to have just entered the door and was coming toward him. The spirit gazed upon him as it advanced, ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... crown of my attainment, unearthly one," replied Kai Lung, preparing to obey. "This concerns the story of Ten-teh, whose name adorns ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... generally chosen on the advice of magicians who are supposed to know the sites which are likely to be most favourable to the deceased. Sometimes the body is exhumed at great expense, still on the advice of the same magicians, who, being in direct communication with both earthly and unearthly spirits, get to know that the spot which had been originally selected was not a favourable one. Under such circumstances, a speedy removal is necessary, which, of course entails both worry and money-spending and special fees for the reporting ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... by a prolonged cry from the floor above, a cry so shrill and unearthly that it froze the blood in their veins. In an instant there followed a loud knocking at the outer door, and forgetful of their own troubles, they crowded together like a flock of frightened crows driven from ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... and shattered, weary and gentle, and with the tears ever welling into her eyes, above all when she endeavoured to write to Sophy; and she showed her ordinary earnestness only when she entreated to see her boy once more. Her husband took her to look on the countenance settled into the expression of unearthly peace, but she was not satisfied; it was not her own Gilbert, boyish, sensitive, dependent, and shrinking. The pale brow, the marked manly features, the lower ones concealed by the brown moustache, belonged to the hero ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The unearthly stillness combined with the brilliant, unabated, unfailing light had a curious mystery about it that charmed and delighted me. The sea, so blue and tranquil, sparkled softly on my left hand, the pellucid blue of the sky stretched overhead, ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... measuring the fall, and the effect of the spark of light at the top of the long steep slope was extremely strange from below. The whole scene was so remarkable, that it required some effort to realise the fact that I was not in a dream. Christian stood at the top invisible, jodeling in a most unearthly manner, and developing an astonishing falsetto power, only interrupting his performance to assure me that he was not coming down again; so I was obliged to measure the breadth of the fall by myself. I chose ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... lightened vessel when a tidal wave swept into the basin from the north. This came at the tag end of the storm,—on the third day, in fact. The Doraine seemed actually to be afloat for a few seconds, heaving, shuddering, groaning. Her bottom, after scraping and grinding and giving up the most unearthly sounds, suddenly appeared to have freed itself completely from the rocks on which it was jammed. She seemed on the point of righting herself. Then she started to roll over on her side! Almost as abruptly she stopped, shivered, and then lay still again. But ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... impression of being encompassed by invisible power and protection. In vain she said to herself that the simple and unlooked-for method of her escape was one of those coincidences which only appear to support faith, that her deliverance had been of no unearthly sort, but brought about by means doubtfully righteous—consent to trick the boy and to say little on hearing the Mormons falsely accused. When she had told herself this, the impression that underneath her folly a guiding hand had impelled and saved her, in spite of her small marring of the work, ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... I trimmed the midnight lamp, Yfilling of mine head with classic lore, Mine hands firm clasped upon my temples damp, Methought I heard a tapping at the door; 'Come in,' I cried, with most unearthly rore, Fearing a horrid Dun or Don to see, Or Tomkins, that unmitigated bore, Whom I love not, but who alas! loves me, And cometh oft unbid and drinketh ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... delight in doing so. As she waited, the rose and amber tints died on the white peaks at the head of the valley, . . . the flaming orange behind them turned from clear gold to vermilion, . . . from rose madder to an unearthly red that glowed behind a veil of amethyst while the ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... An unearthly, piercing yell split the forest air. Then Stern saw the obeah, his jaw hanging oddly awry, all loose and shattered, fall headlong in ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... number of pensionnaires who seemed to have all run wild together in the corridors and gardens, and played all sorts of tricks on the nuns. Sometimes Cecile told me some of these, and very unedifying they were,—acting ghosts in the passages, fastening up the cell doors, ringing the bells at unearthly hours, putting brushes or shoes in the beds, and the like ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... finding himself a man of great fame, and hungry, for more still, he tries to measure himself against the greatest men in the land, but nothing comes of these trials, for he is being reserved for a greater deed than the dealing with mere men; his enemy is Glam the thrall; the revenant of a strange, unearthly man who was himself killed by an evil spirit; Grettir contends with, and slays, this monster, whose dying curse on him is the ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... have paid me in permitting me to join you. And now I am going to ask a great favor. Could you, would you, give me some idea of 'the rebel yell,' as it was called? We heard so much about that. I am most curious to hear it. It is always spoken of as perfectly terrifying, almost unearthly." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... Bark-mottlings, fibre-spiralings, Fern-wavings and leaf-flickerings; Each dial-marked leaf and flower-bell Wherewith in every lonesome dell Time to himself his hours doth tell; All tree-sounds, rustlings of pine-cones, Wind-sighings, doves' melodious moans, And night's unearthly undertones; All placid lakes and waveless deeps, All cool reposing mountain-steeps, Vale-calms and tranquil lotos-sleeps; Yea, all fair forms, and sounds, and lights, And warmths, and mysteries, and mights, Of Nature's utmost depths and heights,— —These doth my timid ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... of certain discordant sounds, reaching their ears above the roar of the rapids, which presently became distinguishable as the beating of drums, mingled with a sort of braying bellow, comparable to nothing that they had ever heard before. As the pair pressed on, the unearthly sounds gradually grew louder, not only because they were approaching the source of them but also because it was evident that the producers of the sounds were becoming more excited, for the tapping of the drums increased in rapidity ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... appearance we are told, in an account of a concert in London: "A tall, haggard figure, with long, black hair, strangely falling down to his shoulders, slid forward like a spectral apparition. There was something awful, unearthly in that countenance; but his play! our pen seems involuntarily to evade the difficult task of giving utterance to sensations which are beyond the reach of language." After detailing the performance, the account continues: "These excellencies consist in the combination of absolute mechanical ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... anything in the world: they even leave Senta's declaration in the "Dutchman" far behind; they are at once triumphant and charged with a pathos nearly unendurable in its intensity. The scene ends with a strange hushed unison passage like some unearthly chant: it is the lull before the breaking of the storm. The entry of Pizarro and the pistol business are by no means done as Wagner or Mozart would have done them. The music is always excellent and sometimes great, but persistently symphonic and not ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... most musical and solemn, bringing back the olden times, With their strange, unearthly changes, rang the melancholy chimes, Like the psalms from some old cloister, when the nuns sing in the choir; And the great bell tolled among them, like the chanting of a friar. Visions of the days departed, shadowy phantoms ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... traversed narrow, winding streets, where night had already fallen in the shadow of clammy walls. Strange and eerie was the path between wet trees, when we had left the town behind. The lamplighter with his tall wand alight seemed like some unearthly messenger come to ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... becoming therefore poor fiction, by being first of all a study of veritable men and women, not lay-figures to carry out an argument. The eyes of the imagination can always see Esther Prynne and Dimmesdale, honest but weak man of God, the evil Chillingworth and little Pearl who is all child, unearthly though she be, a symbol at once of lost innocence and a hope of renewed purity. No pale abstractions these; no folk in fiction are more believed in: they are of our own kindred with whom we suffer or fondly rejoice. In a story so metaphysical as "The House of ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... eyes in the case of a person of strong individuality, then there is a chance that I may be visited this night by Elijah Raven his ghost. But his owlish countenance never appeared between me and that patch of pale dim light; nor did I ever feel a breath of cold unearthly air on me. ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... the late afternoon sun, piercing through the narrow window, fell in a golden band of light upon the folded hands, lighting up the aged face with an almost unearthly radiance. ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... This unearthly glimmer, faint as it was, helped us much, indeed but for it we must have been overtaken, for here the ground was very rough, full of holes also made by burrowing marmots. Thus in our extremity help did come to us from the Mountain, until at length ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... Yell? I couldn't do it for the life of me. Get up and look for him? Wild horses could not have dragged a toe of me out of bed. Stay where I was till the unearthly truant returned? No, thank you. At the bare notion my rigid muscles relaxed, my erect hair lay down, and I collapsed, a limp heap, on to the pillow, with every available sheet and blanket drawn over my ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... the dross from the lamp of the spirit so that it burns with a purity almost unearthly; sometimes sorrow sears, rendering the very soul insensible; and sometimes sorrow remains under the ashes, a living coal steadily consuming all that is noble, hardening all that is ignoble; and is extinguished ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... husbands. Whenever Josephine returned, even from an ordinary morning drive, he would leave any engagements to greet her as she alighted from her carriage. But now, after an absence of eighteen months, he remained sternly in his chamber, the victim of almost unearthly misery. ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... necessity was, that he must stoop and kneel right over the water-but, in order to send his legs in advance down the wall to the top of the mound. It was a moment of agony. That very moment, with an appalling unearthly cry, something dark, something hideous, something of inconceivable ghastliness, as it seemed to Tommy, sprang right out of the water into the air. He tumbled from the wall among the iron, ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... object of poetry is to give pleasure, and that the pleasure of a poem depends largely on melody, on sound rather than on sense. Finally, he believed that poetry should deal with beauty alone, that poetic beauty is of a supernal or unearthly kind, and that such beauty is forever associated with melancholy. To Poe the most beautiful imaginable object was a beautiful woman; but since her beauty must perish, the poet must assume a tragic or despairing attitude ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... They suck a redder honey than bees know. Unearthly wine Sleeps in this bloom; and, when it falls, ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... Vinton would say, this morning air and the view are worth crawling out at an unearthly hour to enjoy!" he exclaimed. "That ocean looks about a million miles wide, too; you can't even tell ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... only the passing of a tool-car in the subway underneath the cemetery, and the hammering of a workman at a forge in a niche of the tunnel. But, rising out of the tombs, it was gruesome and unearthly ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp |
