"Wordless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for somewhere, falling from gray rocks, hidden away among deep shadows of pine and maple, its voice hushed to a soothing murmur as of wind among the pines, Trenton falls was singing its age- old songs. Then, too, we felt the wordless melody of our own joyous hearts filled ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... as he came up through the purple gloom of the moorland, the stars' brilliancy silvering her—waiting—yielding in pallid silence to his arms, crushed in them, looking into his eyes, dumb, wordless. ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... which in other circumstances would have made me exceedingly happy, only added to my misery when, as it appeared, I had only a short time to live. Nature could charm, she could enchant me, and her wordless messages to my soul were to me sweeter than honey and the honeycomb, but she could not take the sting and victory from death, and I had perforce to go elsewhere for consolation. Yet even so, in my worst days, my darkest years, when occupied with the laborious ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... the tide pouring eastward, he had turned down Broadway before he realized that there had been a half smile of recognition on those rich red Hungarian lips, a wordless message in the dark splendors of ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... rightly what it does. And from the darkness by the wall a figure coming with swift silent strides across the turf to the marble steps, black as a shadow in the moonlight, lean and lithe and with an untamed shock of hair. The figure stood upon the lowest step and called softly,—a tender, wordless call which drifted low across the night and scarcely reached to Marcus's ears. Marcus felt for the knife-hilt at his belt. But the Lady Varia, within the lighted room, heard the call, and stepped across the threshold with head raised and ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... patient and self-subjugated—the face of the convent. But, of course, old family serving-women may have this same expression, for they too are nuns in a sense; in household rites they renounce the world, and if the spirit does not sour, little by little, they take wordless vows and obliterate themselves in service. This woman who stood before me, with skirts and apron blown about her substantial figure by the chill wind that poured into the vestibule, seemed at first to be one of them. It was only when I perceived that her eyes were filled with ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... Helder was bowing over Claire's hand, and professing his delight. The little group in the corner were pressing forward to obtain a point of vantage, and throughout the company in general was passing a wordless hum of excitement. Mr Helder was seating himself at the piano, a girl in a white dress had ascended the impromptu platform and now stood by his side, a pretty girl, a very pretty girl, a girl who acknowledged ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of that fence was appalling in a vague, wordless way, Val unconsciously drew closer to her husband when she looked at it, and shivered in spite of ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... and for five seconds Blair blinked his dulled eyes in wordless surprise; then his fist came down upon the cottonwood board with a ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... was put in such an unexpectedly mild tone that Cumshaw was left wordless for the nonce, though his face showed in all their fulness the emotions that were stirring within him. Doubt, indecision, fear ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... mocking songster, jongleur of the feathered world. In all this blythe land it did not seem that there was an ache or a pain, of the body or of the heart; the light, the air, the music, all combined to form a wordless ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... smother, gag, strike dumb, dumfounder; drown the voice, put to silence, stop one's mouth, cut one short. stick in the throat. Adj. aphonous[obs3], dumb, mute; deafmute, deaf and dumb; mum; tongue- tied; breathless, tongueless, voiceless, speechless, wordless; mute as a fish, mute as a stockfish[obs3], mute as a mackerel; silent &c. (taciturn) 585; muzzled; inarticulate, inaudible. croaking, raucous, hoarse, husky, dry, hollow, sepulchral, hoarse as a raven; rough. Adv. with bated breath, with the finger on the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... differs from each other, yet they're all different from sech folks as Silver Phil. Boggs, goin' to war, is full of good-humoured grandeur, gala and confident, ready to start or stop like a good hoss. Cherokee Hall is quiet an' wordless; he gets pale, but sharp an' deadly; an' his notion is to fight for a finish. Peets is haughty an' sooperior on the few o'casions when he onbends in battle, an' comports himse'f like a gent who fights downhill; the same, ondoubted, bein' doo to them book advantages ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... and brighter in a cloudless sky, as the fishing-smack shot through the water, while the steady dip of the oars seemed to keep time to a wordless tune. In that bright moonlight the sails of the Crow grew whiter and larger with every dip of the oars that were carrying the Pretty Polly so lightly over ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... scarcely a fugue of Bach's that I did not master. Mendelssohn's "Lieder" gave a lighter recreation, and many a happy evening did we spend, my mother and I, over the stately strains of the blind Titan, and the sweet melodies of the German wordless orator. Musical "At Homes," too, were favourite amusements at Harrow, and at these my facile fingers made me ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... And beauty came like the setting sun: My heart was shaken with tears; and horror Drifted away ... O, but Everyone Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... we had issued from under the curtain of twilight that we learned the story of the chase which had brought our salvation. Edmund first obtained it from Ala and Juba, filling out the outlines of their wordless narrative with his ready power of interpretation, and then he ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... handed it in his turn to The Bat. Then it was passed on to all the subchiefs, and everyone smoked it in gravity and silence. The smoke circled up in rings against the low roof, and every man sat upon his mat of skins, painted, motionless, and wordless. The young chief, Big Fox, waited. Though his eyes never turned, he saw every detail of the scene, and he was conscious of the tense and breathless silence. He was conscious, too, of the immense ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... about to give it up in despair, when I started forward with a wordless cry. The bar of yellow ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... had begun to visit the island again, singly now, singly always. Discussion died down temporarily and the wordless tete-a-teteing began again. Lulu hovered ever at Honey's shoulder. Clara postured always within Pete's vision. Chiquita took up her eternal vigil on Frank's reef. Peachy discovered new wonders of what Honey ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... round and beautiful young face Is full of wordless rapture; and so fair You know her breast is joy's best dwelling-place; You ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... in the vivid green of alfalfa field, of vineyards, and of orchards. Around about the town, the desert lies, rich, yellow, and to the east rise mountains that stand like deep purple organ pipes against the blue desert sky. It seemed to Jim this morning that the pipes had forever murmured with the wordless brooding music of the desert winds. That age after age they had been uttering vast harmonies too deep for human ears to hear, uttering them to countless generations of men who had come and gone like ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... of his coming. Helen was playing dreamily, and humming Some wordless melody of white-souled thought, While Roy and I sat by the open door, Re-living childish incidents of yore. My eyes were glowing, and my cheeks were hot With warm young blood; excitement, joy, or pain Alike would send swift coursing through each ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... get there for the first, but it was plenty bad enough," and his eyes were seeing wordless sights. "The United States had declared war on Austria December 7th, and four days later Section One was rolling across the battlefield ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... and accept its meaning. She could not play or sing; she looked often in the dog's eyes, wondering if its soul felt as dumb and full as hers; but she could not sing. If she could, what a story she would have told in a wordless way to this man who was coming! All she could do to show that he was welcome was to make crackers. Cooking is a sensual, grovelling utterance of feeling, you think? Yet, considering the drift of most women's lives, one fancies that as pure and deep love syllables itself ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... a motion picture, I watched the sky and the earth turn over and over, and I heard my voice mouthing wordless shouts of fear. Catherine's cry of pain and fright came, and I listened as my mind reconstructed it this time without wincing. Then the final crash, the horrid wave of pain and the sear of the flash-fire. I went through my own horror and ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... spot, that he recognised the dear features of the Mother, knew her his as hers he was, and loved her with passion. The sea is vast and wondrous, but it is alien. It holds you apart; it is not of you. But the gentle earth with her undulating form and the growing life in her lap, soothes with wordless harmonies. It was then that he forgave the fate which deformed him. A twisted oak, that is all—no less a tree and no less beautiful in the landscape! And it was sufficient to live. In the bosom of so much beauty sufficient also to die. As he stood, thinking it out, feeling the wonder and the ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... moved from the position he had steadily maintained before the doorway. He stepped to one side, and bowed formally to the three women, who rose promptly as they realized the significance of his action. Cicily, too, stood up, wordless in her suffering. For the moment, at least, her indomitable spirit was overwhelmed by this crowning misfortune, and she felt all her ambition hopelessly baffled. Through this last catastrophe, her benevolent scheming must be brought ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... Mavourneen, the wolf-hound, Brock's hand on the shaggy head. The two swung steadily toward her, Brock smiling into her eyes, holding her eyes with his, and as they were closer, she heard Mavourneen crying in wordless dumb joy, crying as she had not done since the day when Brock came home the last time. Above the sound Brock's voice spoke, every trick of inflection so familiar, so sweet, that the joy of it was sharp, ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... said to Miss Bruce-Drummond who had met up with them for a week-end at Stirling, "those poor children are so pitifully what Gelett Burgess calls 'the gagged and wordless folk'; it would be so much easier—and safer—for them if they belonged to his 'caste ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... the plucky mounts who bore their riders so gallantly into the flight where all defensive power was denied themselves! He paused long enough to pat the firm gray neck, to feel the answering pressure against his hand. Then he raised his rifle again and took careful aim, as he breathed a wordless prayer that chance might guide his bullet into the man who had scarred his faithful friend. Another Boer dropped; Weldon hoped it was by his own bullet. Then both he and the gray broncho pricked up their ears as, close on their flank, ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... took turns commanding the foredeck look-out, keeping it awake and its units from quarreling. The rest of us found no joy in life, and not too much hope even when Fred's concertina lifted the refrain of missionary hymn-tunes that even the porters knew, and most of us sang, the porters humming wordless melancholy through their noses. (When that happened Lady Saffren Waldon's scorn was something the arch-priests of Babylon ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... grew up among the trees, and the breezes and the brooks, those wonderful wordless teachers. I envy you, for they give one time to think—to expand. I have known only city life myself. It is stimulating, but one is so easily turned aside from one's direct purpose. ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... and passed through. That was the last Herbert saw of him; but the fourth actor in the drama, the wordless player whose part had been so momentous, took the stage. Limping along, now whining in sharp agony, now growling in fierce anger, with blood flowing but hair bristling, the hound Boris dragged himself across the room, through the door, after Rupert of Hentzau. ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... He was wordless for a moment. "She—she died, sir," he said. "She's died suddenly." His face quivered, he was blubbering. He couldn't say anything more; he stood snivelling in ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... dying Have thought they heard one pray 110 Wordless, urgent; and replying One seem to say him nay: And watchers by the dead have heard A windy swell from miles away, With sobs and screams, but not a word Distinct for them to say: And watchers out at sea have caught Glimpse of a pale gleam here or there, Come and gone ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... of the room with something of the regal industry of the queen bee, as if she were the natural source of those agencies which sustain and heal. He heard her as she busied herself in their bedroom. He knew that she was already making preparations for that journey of his. She was singing a soft, wordless song in ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... thousand chords with thousand varying tones, Whilst I but one poor sound can offer thee Of tenderness and truth. At times, indeed, This too may have its power,—but then it lasts One and the same forever, sounding still Unalterably like itself alone; A wordless prayer to God for what we love, 'Tis more a whisper than a sound, and charms Like new-mown meadows, when the grass exhales Sweet fragrance to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... "to find out how well you have finished the persecution you began ten years ago? If you have, you may be quite consoled. It is finished to-night." His anger, rushing over the gates, beat down upon the old man, who sat wordless before its flood. It was a passionate story Ramoni told, a story of years in the novitiate when the old man had ever repressed him, a story of checks that had been put upon him as a preacher, of his banishment from Rome, and ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... uninfluenced by their varying moods. He watched them in sunlight when they were all shining white and violet and soft purple, with great shadows spread over their slopes where the forests stood deepest; and they heartened him, gave him a wordless promise that better times were to come. He saw them swathed with clouds, and felt the chill of their cold aloofness; the world was a gloomy place then, and friendship was all false and love a mockery. He saw them at night—then was ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... daisies, from the soil Upbreathing wordless messages of love, Soothing of earth-born brethren the toil And lifting e'en the ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... were occupied in undoing the package that they had put down near the painted case. Weighed down with wordless horror, ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... returned to his laboratory. The gray friar has followed him (like Goethe's poodle) and slips into an alcove unobserved. The philosopher turns to the Bible, which lies upon a lectern, and falls into a meditation, which is interrupted by a shriek. He turns and sees the friar standing motionless and wordless before him. He conjures the apparition with the seal of Solomon, and the friar, doffing cowl and gown, steps forward as a cavalier (an itinerant scholar in Goethe). He introduces himself as a part of the power that, always thinking evil, ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... twelfth, for he found a sad joy in contemplating his handiwork as he sat at his lonely meals, and his first sitting-room was only twelve feet by eight. Finally, either because of his importunity, or because she disliked the thought that the wordless witnesses might fall into unsympathetic hands, the girl married the man, and scrubbed the stools nicely with soap and sand, and grew quite fond of them. And only once did she regret her surrender; and that was when it flashed across her one day that twenty would have been a prettier number: ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... was the attempt of this young man to describe what all who have experienced cosmic consciousness unite in saying is indescribable, for the very obvious reason that there are no words in which to express what is wordless, and inexpressible. This authentic account of a young man under twenty years of age, however, serves to prove that there is no special age of physical maturity in which the attainment of this state of ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... a wordless gratitude at the Frenchman's cheer when a figure came lurching toward him and fell into the space Doret had vacated. This man was quite the opposite of the one who had just left; he was old and he was far from robust. He fell face downward ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... sunrise; He was hope and courage like a sunlit morning in spring. He was adventure for ever, and His courage and adventure flowed into and submerged and possessed the being of the man who beheld him. And this presence of God stood over the bishop, and seemed to speak to him in a wordless speech. ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... road yesterday, I stopp'd to watch a man near by, ploughing a rough stony field with a yoke of oxen. Usually there is much geeing and hawing, excitement, and continual noise and expletives, about a job of this kind. But I noticed how different, how easy and wordless, yet firm and sufficient, the work of this young ploughman. His name was Walter Dumont, a farmer, and son of a farmer, working for their living. Three years ago, when the steamer "Sunnyside" was wreck'd of a bitter ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... as if irresolute or uncertain how to treat her. Then, with a wordless sound that needed no interpretation, he pushed back the sleeve from the place whence he had sucked the poison. It showed only a little red now. He bent very low until his lips pressed it again. Then for one burning moment they ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... moment of time in the Market of Silver-stead, as if the bolt of the Gods had fallen there; and then arose a huge wordless yell from those about the altar, and one of the priests who was left hove up his glaive two-handed to smite the naked slaughter- thralls; but or ever the stroke fell, Bow-may's second shaft was through his throat, and he rolled over amidst ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... prince retreated toward his apartments, the alarming alternative proposed by the merchant repeated itself with a sort of wordless insistence: ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... that his work reveals. Pippa Passes is a poem on exactly the same scheme as the Old Cumberland Beggar, but in treatment no two things could be further apart. The intervention of Pippa is dramatic, and though her song is in the same key as the wordless message of Wordsworth's beggar she is a world apart from him, because she is something not out of natural history, but out of life. The Victorian age extended the imaginative sensibility which its predecessor had brought ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... groan, he knotted his fingers together and prayed the first real prayer his heart had ever uttered. It was wordless and formless, just an inarticulate cry for help in the ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... to reassure her after the fashion of a lover, in that wordless language which is ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... are quiet; only the destructive agencies, the stormy wind, the heavy rain and hail, are noisy. Love of the deepest sort is wordless, the sunshine steals down silently, the dew falls noiselessly, and the communion of spirit with spirit is calmer and quieter than anything else in the world quiet as the spontaneous turning of the ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... delight, his brown cheeks colored, his eyes sparkled. "Gosh!" said he. "I—like you!" For some time thereafter he remained red and silent, but he kept one big hand in the pocket where lay the gold cigarette case. There was a wordless song in Buddy Briskow's heart, for—he had made a ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... she returned to Hobart. He mistook the reason, and she could not very well explain that her blushes were due to the last wordless retort of the retiring "old love," whose hand had gone up in a ridiculous bless-you-my-children attitude just before ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... feet. The rough stone on which my toes sank had been covered with metal and I smelled scorching flesh, jerking up my feet with a wordless snarl of rage and fury, hanging in agony by my ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... insisted upon. She was not wiser than usual that morning, but the noise of the train made niceties of statement impossible. She abandoned the argument perforce, and Elsie, left with her retort unanswered, acknowledged its cheapness in her own quick, strong, wordless way. ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... avenue, wondering at his strange silence. It had a curious effect upon me. I would rather have heard threats—even a torrent of anger. There was something curiously ominous in that slow, wordless exit. I watched him uneasily, full ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... appearing. The shrunken woods expand; the stringent, sparkling wintry stars grow mild and liquid, shining with a tremulous and tender light; the whole world seems larger, happier, more full of untold, untried possibilities. The air vibrates with wordless promises, calls, messages, beckonings; and fairy-tales are told by all ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... he saw, perplexed, that Adelaide had risen with a faint wordless cry, and was gazing at him as though she were puzzled and alarmed a ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... table I made haste first of all to catch the eye of our waiter, who was also the proprietor of the little inn. I pressed a wordless plea into his hand. "We are eccentric," I murmured in explanation, "and you must look well ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... brought the landscape over to its creator, and, though no word was spoken, there flashed between the eyes of the artist, whose signature gave to a canvas the value of a precious stone and the jeans-clad boy whose destiny was that of the vendetta, a subtle, wordless message. It was the countersign of brothers-in-blood who recognize in each other the bond ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... Banion had carried no weapon with him. His own long rifle he snatched from its pegs. At a long, easy lope he ran along the path which carried across the face of the ravine. His moccasined feet made no sound. He saw no one in the creek bed or at the long turn. But new, there came a loud, wordless cry which he knew was meant for him. It was Will ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... modern compromise, that is at once cosy and cruel. For there is really in our world to-day the colour and silence of the cushioned divan; and that sense of palace within palace and garden within garden which makes the rich irresponsibility of the East. Have we not already the wordless dance, the wineless banquet, and all that strange unchristian conception of luxury without laughter? Are we not already in an evil Arabian Nights, and walking the nightmare cities of an invisible despot? Does not our hangman strangle secretly, the bearer of the bow string? Are we not already ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... window looking out on the wreck of her life in a stupor of wordless pain. She saw her boy leap the fence as a hound and rushed from the house in alarm ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... in this your plausible defence, do make your scriptureless light, which in very deed is darkness (Isa 8:20), the rule of your brother's faith; and how well you will come off for this in the day of God, you might, were you not wedded to your wordless ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... talk and breathing happily the June-scented air. The stolid man and his placid wife who had sat near the rear had already started for the Colonel's house, following the foot-path across the fields. They walked silently side by side, as if long used to wordless companionship. ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... masters served them. Julian, who, hidden in the Opisthodom, had watched the whole ceremony, secretly rejoiced, because by means of these ancient heathen rites he had entirely defeated the Christians. In them, as he had intended, there was a wordless expression of philanthropy and charity, and both ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... to her ears her husband's fame, Won in the fields of fruitful Italy; And decks with praises Collatine's high name, Made glorious by his manly chivalry With bruised arms and wreaths of victory: Her joy with heaved-up hand she doth express, And, wordless, so greets ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... summer sun a slipping down, And the maple in the hazel glade Throws down the path a longer shade, And the hills are growing brown; To-ring, to-rang, to-ringleringle, By threes and fours and single The cows are coming home; The same sweet sound of wordless psalm, The same sweet June-day rest and calm, The same sweet scent of bud and balm, ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... A wordless carol of life and love, Of nature free and wild; And the three monks paused in the evening shade, Looked up at each ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... her arms and screaming, wordless; but no more of her saw Birdalone, for the boat came round about the ness of Green Eyot, and there lay the Great Water under the summer heavens all wide and landless before her. And it was now noon ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... true that there is nothing strikingly original nor remarkable in the outline of the story. That is impossible in a wordless play. Bernard Shaw, speaking of a pantomime with music, 'A Pierrot's Life,' produced some years ago in London, says, 'I am conscious of the difficulty of making any but the most threadbare themes intelligible to the public, without ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... Martin was anchored by horror. Then he leaped forward, giving voice as he did to a great, arousing, wordless bellow. And even as he ran blindly ahead those few paces, he heard a heavy voice give a shouted supplement to ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... was wordless rage. He dismounted and made his way up to the lamed horse; Gloria, from where she lay, thought at first that of course he was coming to her. But he kept his back to her as he lifted the horse's fore-leg and felt tenderly ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... the hills To make of Tartarus forgotten fear. Yea all the generations of the world, Whose whence and whither but the gods shall know. Are vassal to your vows forevermore." And she, I knew, made answer, for her words Fell warm as womanhood with wordless things, But I had drifted on within my dream, To that pale space which ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... Otherwise, two things he presently noticed, while forging pluckily ahead, must have sent him headlong back to the comparative safety of his tent, instead of only making his hands close more tightly upon the rifle stock, while his heart, trained for the Wee Kirk, sent a wordless prayer winging its way to heaven. Both tracks, he saw, had undergone a change, and this change, so far as it concerned the footsteps of the man, was ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... rather delicate young lady in appearance, possibly in her early twenties, the boy being at least four years younger. She was not pretty, but as her eyes lighted upon the sisters, she too smiled so pleasantly, they were at once drawn to her, and returned the wordless greeting with more than civility. Then ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... hymns an' sa'ms.[TR: footnote indicated but none found] But I' member one song' bout a frog pond an' one 'bout 'Jump, Mr. Toad.' I's too wordless to sing 'em now, but dey was funny. Us danced plenty, too. Some o' de men clogged an' pidgeoned, but when us had dances dey was real cotillions, lak de white folks had. Dey was always a fiddler an', on Chris'mus an' other holidays, de slaves ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... uneasy over his son's silence; he would rather have had stormy argument than a wordless acceptance of the situation. Chaffering in these sorts of bargains means that a man can look after his interests. "A man who is ready to pay you anything you ask will pay nothing," old Sechard was saying to himself. While ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... that world-wide theatre of nodding heads and buzzing whisperers, in which she now beheld herself unpitiably martyred, one door stood open. At any cost, through any stress of suffering, that greasy laughter should be stifled. She closed her eyes, breathed a wordless prayer, and pressed the weapon to ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for supplies. Then came the day when a great joy came into Stub's life—his master spoke to him. It was not the old fond greeting, to be sure. It was a command, and a sharp one; but in Stub's opinion it was a vast improvement on the snarling oaths or wordless glowerings which had been his portion for the past weeks, and he responded to it with every sense and ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... off and gazing wordless for a moment at this new son of his, this man he had never seen, in his captain's uniform with bits of ribbon on the breast of it,—tried to say how proud he was and choked instead, it was for Mary that he reached out an unconscious, ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... thrice, in tragic tones: "Is that all?" The effect was ludicrous, and the time for my presentation had passed. Thereupon he fell, with furious abuse, upon the English, and particularly English women. But I presented the chain to him later, and that day closed for us both with a wordless content, so full was ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the little, desperate thing, seemed to find in herself no power of consolation. And as she stood wordless, with dimming eyes, there came from without a sound of mingling voices. Others were come with offers of service and sympathy. A confusion of Spanish and English hurtled on Jane's uncomprehending ear; some one climbing the step cried, "Ave Maria!" ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... knew that the crucial hour was striking, and his prayer for help was the wordless outreaching of every atom of his consciousness for that One more powerful than weak humanity, ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... and expressed his badly expressed idea. Levin smiled joyfully; he was struck by this transition from the confused, verbose discussion with Pestsov and his brother to this laconic, clear, almost wordless communication of ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... feeling of loathing and masculine contempt toward them would never forsake him. He derided the poor woman in every way, and tortured her morally, seeking out the most painful spots. She would only keep silent, sigh, weep, and getting down on her knees before him, kiss his hands. And this wordless submission irritated Horizon still more. He drove her away from him. She would not go away. He would push her out into the street; but she, after an hour or two, would come back shivering from cold, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... point on the loitering herd, grinned a wordless greeting. Andy passed with a casual wave of his hand and took his place on the left flank. From his face Weary guessed that all was well with the claims, and the assurance served to lighten his spirits. ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... this hushed, wordless calm continued, Sylvia was aware that something new was happening to her, that something in her stirred which had never before made its presence known. She felt very queer, a little startled, very much bewildered. What was that half-thought ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... glance of wordless contempt. Beezy ran and tangled herself in the tall young fellow's ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... back up the hill toward the corral where he had left his horse, he was filled with a wordless disgust of the town and its people. The night was still and cool, almost frosty. The air so clear and so rare filled his lungs with wholesomely sweet and reanimating breath. His head cleared, and his heart grew regular in its beating. The moon was sailing in mid-ocean, between the Great Divide ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... breathing heavily, was in a state of wordless delight. "It's just as well I wasn't for scoldin' Bugsey for cryin' over his suit," she said at length; "for if it wasn't that I'm feart o' spottin' some of these, I'd be for doin' a cry myself. I've got such a glad spot here in me Adam's apple. Reach me yer apron, ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... forces ran to intelligence—secret intelligence, the wordless incalculable intuition of the Cat. It was, indeed, the cat ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... hour after Prescott's tour of guard duty began three wild wails, wordless, smote the air, one after the other. Dave, Tom and ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... verses, a throb of tender longing from the very Christ-heart, "Come unto me ..." The words stole about the room like tears. Then she would ask "all present," she said, to engage for a moment in silent prayer. There was a wordless interval, only the vague street noises surging past the door. A thrill ran along the benches as Laura brought it to an end with sudden singing. She was on her feet as the others raised their heads, ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... few, we are many: and yet, O our Mother, Many years were we wordless and nought was our deed, But now the word flitteth from brother to brother: We have furrowed the acres and ...
— Chants for Socialists • William Morris
... temptation, and in sorrow, guidance in difficult circumstances, and in all of life's movements; help of all sorts, financial, bodily, mental, spiritual—all come from God, and necessitate a constant touch with Him. There needs to be a constant stream of petition going up, many times wordless prayer. And there will be a constant return stream of answer and supply coming down. The door between God and one's own self must be kept ever open. The knob to be turned is on our side. He opened His side long ago, and propped it open, and threw the knob away. The whole life hinges ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... heard, arose the bleating of lambs. Near at hand, throned among the purple flowers above their heads, a thrush was pouring out the rapture that thrilled his tiny life. The whole world pulsed to the one great melody—the universal, wordless song. Only the man and the woman were silent as intruders in a ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... A groan of wordless horror went up from the wreckers. For a moment they stared at the thing rocking and sidling in their midst, with grotesque motions of life and the face and hands of a terrific death; and then, as one ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... ventured to disturb their wordless devotions, but presently the ship-master rose, drawing his fine, stalwart figure to its full height; then turning his kind, manly, grave face to his wife, who had also risen to her feet, he laid one hand on her still abundant white hair and held out the other which she took in hers. Mariamne ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... wordless cry—a cry like the shrill hail of a mute. It brought the man face about. Another second, answering, he stood up, shook off the quilts to free his arms, reached down and caught the ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... into two camps, one on the Colonel's side and one on Kettle's. Anita, of course, sided with her father, and declared he had done perfectly right about Kettle, as he did about everything. Sergeant McGillicuddy was also a faithful adherent of the Colonel's in the wordless warfare that prevailed in the commanding officer's house for the three days in which Kettle enjoyed ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... sound, too, he thought; a wordless tenderness for her flooded his mind, as the perfume of the primroses flooded the night. It seemed as if the lovely ignorance of her was itself a perfume! "'Tell Eleanor'! She doesn't know the wickedness of the world, and I don't want her to." He put ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... he could do. He did not have to tell her that he took comfort in having her there, that everything she did for him was exactly right, that her touch was blessed and had no more strangeness for him than that of a sister—nay, than his own. She too understood those wordless things which are shed from one person, like a radiance, and inhaled by ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... feel my fighting-blood rising, and I swear with a mighty wordless oath that I'll be avenged for that laugh. "The day is young yet. If, before night, I don't wipe both your eyes, ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... at length yielded, and a drowsy consciousness returned, memory and reason being still partly in abeyance. His heavy, half-closed eyes rested on darkness. A crooning sound was in his ear,—a nursery lullaby, wordless but soothing. Where was he? Had he been ill? Was he in his cradle at home? Was Salome sitting by to watch him and give him his medicine? Yes, very ill he was, but would be better in the morning; ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... went sprawling over the rail, a wordless prayer in his heart that no broken legs or sprained ankles were to be his portion. He landed unhurt in a providential flowerbed, and struggled again to his feet to discover that both the monk and Krech ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... Archelaos' court, And yet esteem the silken company So much sky-scud, sea-froth, earth-thistledown, For aught their praise or blame should joy or grieve. Strength amid crowds as late in solitude May lead the still life, ply the wordless task.[90] ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... communion with gods is a lofty desire, but hard to attain through an ignobly definite creed. Dealing with the highest, most wordless states of being, the simians will attempt to conceive them in material form. They will have beliefs, for example, as to the furnishings and occupations in heaven. And why? Why, to help men to have religious conceptions without themselves ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... little ones each he has caught to his breast, And clasped them, and kissed them with fervent caress; Then wordless and tearless, with hearts running o'er, They part who have never been parted before: He springs to his saddle,—the rein is drawn tight,— And Beechenbrook Cottage ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... me! Through thy complaint I hear the wordless blow Of two high-throned, who rule without restraint Of Pity. Heaven forfend ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... when a household should be manless, grumbling about the waste where there was none, peering into bread boxes, prying into corners never meant for masculine eyes. Etta, the girl, was like him, sharp-nosed, ferret-faced, stingy. The mother and the boy turned to each other. In a wordless way they grew very close, those two. It was as if they were silently matched against the ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... fell to their appointed places as the moments passed. A bull-frog boomed out his guttural note, and Fido began to whine and gnaw at the rail just below my feet. He was getting hungry, and I acquiesced to his wordless plea to go home. Night had now come, and the air was chilly, so I buttoned my coat close up to my chin, and moved briskly. We were some distance from home, but the lights of the city were reflected in the sky, and besides, it was not dark, because of the stars, and the road ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... Wheezing breath, wordless cries, grunts, strange laughter sounded. And, withal, the major's hands and arms in one of the pits made a dry, slithering slide and click as he kneaded, worked, and stirred the gems, dredged up fistfuls and let them ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... peace restored; To the fiery fields emanative, and the endless vistas beyond—to the south and the north; To the leavened soil of the general Western World, to attest my songs, To the average earth, the wordless earth, witness of war and peace, To the Alleghanian hills, and the tireless Mississippi, To the rocks I, calling, sing, and all the trees in the woods, To the plain of the poems of heroes, to the prairie spreading wide, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... such a mood as was his to-night. It seemed to him that he had not yet realised his happiness, that in his most rapturous moments he had rated it but poorly, unimaginatively. The strong wings of that glorious wordless song bore him into a finer air, where his faculties of mind and heart grew unconditioned. If it were possible to go back into the world endowed as in these moments! To the greatest man has come the same transfiguration, the same woe of foreseen return to limits. ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... not answer. His lips were sucked tight together now in wordless agony; the cheek muscles, strained taut, stood out like welts of flesh; the huge body, bathed always in that steady glow of orange, was slightly livid in patches. He hopped mechanically, changing from one aching leg to the other; his eyes were closed half the time, his whole being one dumb ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... hither and thither, with a slow, waltz-like movement, similar to that with which he had begun his own mad dance; and as they moved, gradually widening their circles until they were strung out all along the face of the motionless regiments, they hummed a low, weird, wordless song that was somehow inexpressibly suggestive of vague, nameless horror. As for Machenga, after watching his assistants for a minute or two, he stalked slowly toward the king and seated himself at His Majesty's feet, where, after a time, he seemed to lose all consciousness ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... spoken; and the silent ship, as if manned by painted sailors in wax, day after day tore on through all the swift madness and gladness of the demoniac waves. By night the same muteness of humanity before the shrieks of the ocean prevailed; still in silence the men swung in the bowlines; still wordless Ahab stood up to the blast. Even when wearied nature seemed demanding repose he would not seek that repose in his hammock. Never could Starbuck forget the old man's aspect, when one night going down into the cabin to ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... say, begs for drink. Had his petition been a wordless desire it might have been supposed, though falsely, to be a disembodied and quite immaterial event, a transcendental attitude of will, without conditions or consequences, but somehow with an absolute moral dignity. But when the petition became articulate and ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... his magic verse Will mock the envious years for centuries! Since youth, on hearing them, for glory burns, The wordless sorrow comfort in them sees, And careless ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... were heard to sing the same words. Small numbers of women sat about the front of the house or close in the shade of its roof and under its cover. Now and then some one or more of them sang a low-voiced, wordless song — rather a soothing strain than a depressing dirge. During the first days the old women, and again the old men, sang at different times alone the following song, called "a-na'-ko" when sung by the women, and "e-ya'-e" when ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... is a wordless shout from Mr. Yardo; a bright dot hurtles across the screen and at the same time I see a streak of blue flame tearing diagonally downwards a ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... a space, wordless, regarding her. His doubts and questionings had fled before her presence. He remembered the things that he had meant to say. He faced the cameras again and the light about him grew brighter. ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... toward the shore with plummet and sounding-line, and you waited with beating heart for something to happen? I was like that ship before my education began, only I was without compass or sounding-line, and had no way of knowing how near the harbour was. "Light! give me light!" was the wordless cry of my soul, and the light of love shone on me ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... cheek, dark eyes, and thick black hair, one lock of which, hanging low over his forehead, he twisted while he read. He kept glancing up at Miss Susan and smiling at her, whenever he could look away from his book and the fire, and she smiled back. At last, after many such wordless ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... and looked up to the stars. No words came. The cry of her heart was, "O Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me." But she was too ignorant to weave it into a prayer. When human hearts look up to God in wordless agony, the Intercessor translates the attitude ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... silence following the ultimatum she could hear the soft, wordless murmur from the other compartments, the undertone of anxiety like a dark thread through it. In every compartment parents and children, brothers and sisters, were seeing one another for the ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... and of a virtuous taciturnity, sat up all night with Senator Hanway in his study—the night before the caucus. There was none present but Senator Hanway and the wordless telegraphic one; the former, deeming the occasion one proper for that cautious rite, drew the ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... a wordless invitation to purchase; she consulted a collection of small coins in a thin purse, and received from them license to order a glass of beer. There she sat, inhaling and absorbing it all—the new-coloured, new-shaped life in a fairy palace in ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... from each other; and yet they kept right on, hammering away with what might was left in them. Hammering each other—for we stepped aside and looked on while they rolled, and struggled, and gouged, and pounded, and bit, with the strict and wordless attention to business of so many bulldogs. We looked on without apprehension, for they were fast getting past ability to go for help against us, and the arena was far enough from the public road ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... He had heard the scream of every beast of the great forests, but never a scream like that which came from Mercer's lips now. It was not the cry of a man. To Kent it was the voice of a fiend, a devil. It did not call for help. It was wordless. And as the horrible sound issued from Mercer's mouth he could see the swelling throat and bulging eyes that accompanied the effort. They made him think ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... sweet and low The harp breathed out again Its speechless wail, its wordless woe, ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... his place Bowed his head a little space And the leaves by soft airs stirred Lapse of wave and cry of bird Left the solemn hush unbroken Of that wordless prayer unspoken While its wish, on earth unsaid, Rose to Heaven interpreted. As in life's best hours we hear By the spirit's finer ear His low voice within us, thus The All-Father heareth us: And his holy ear we pain With our noisy words and vain. Not for him our violence Storming at ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... the war clouds lowered, and as he talked of his boyish days there, and of the sights and festivities of London town, he found in Caleb Parish and his daughter receptive listeners, but in young Doane a stiff-necked monument of wordless resentment. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... constructively, it had become a fierce though governed passion with both—to learn something of the spiritual life coursing back of the material universe. Equally slowly and inevitably had the two come to believe that the little changeling at the lodge held some wordless clue, some unconscious knowledge as to that outer sphere, that surrounding, peopled ether, in which, under their apparent rationality, the two had come to believe. Yet the banker and his wife stood to Mockwooders for no special cult or fad; it was only between themselves that ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... like a garment o'er me; Space all unmeasured, unrecorded time; While seen with inward eye moves on before me Thought's pictured train in wordless pantomime. ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. |
