"Starlit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he would have seen that soft mysterious light again shining in the old councilor's eyes. But now Nathaniel stood erect, his nostrils sniffing the air, catching once more the sweet scent of lilac. He hurried out into the opening, with the old man close behind him, and peered down into the starlit gloom into which the two girls had disappeared. The lovely face that had appeared to him for an instant at Obadiah's cabin began to haunt him. He was sure now that his sudden appearance had not been the only cause of its terror, and he felt that he should have ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... Byers, having hauled Pete in, followed suit, waving good-night to Senator Walsen and the ladies. In another minute both big biplanes were lost to sight, so swiftly did they vanish in a easterly course under the starlit heavens, shimmer of gray haze hugging the lower just ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... friend—not much of a gift, certainly, but one which would be at least congenial to my own longing for a life of service, and my hopeless prospects in a profession in which wealth was made the test of ability. So as I lay there in the quiet of the starlit prairie, my mind, running in these eddying circles of thought, fixed itself upon this idea: I would go to Paris. I would seek through one well-known in other times the means of putting in execution my resolution. I felt strangely excited; sleep seemed ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... distinguishable thing in the valleys, pulling themselves (as one feels it) rapidly up, like great prehistoric shapes of Saurians. Soon the sky only and mountains will exist. Then begins the time, before the starlit night comes to say its say, when everything grows drowsy, a little vague, and the blurred mountains go to sleep in the smoke of dusk. Then only, due west, the great Carrara peaks stand out against the sanguine sky, long pointed curves and flame-shaped sudden ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... hand and Bartley opened the big gate. As they walked down the dim, starlit road they were startled by the advent of a yellow dog that bounded from the ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... way along the top of the cliffs, pausing now and then to look around him. The crescent moon had gone down, leaving a starlit night, in which the sea lay softly moaning at the foot of the broken crags. The sense of infinitude which comes to the soul when it is in harmony with the peace of nature, arose and spread itself abroad in ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... up the steep ascent, she found her room without any difficulty. As it was again a clear, starlit night, there was light enough for her to find everything she wanted; and the trouble at her heart kept her imagination from being as active as it would otherwise have been, in recalling the terrible ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... of direction he found his chair, and sank into it. Overhead he could hear the soft sound of her feet moving about the room, his room. Quiet succeeded. Banneker, leagues removed from sleep, or the hope of it, despite his bodily weariness, followed the spirit of wonder through starlit and ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Tarzan turns his head in the direction of the sound. It is very dark within the tent. Slowly the back rises from the ground, forced up by the head and shoulders of a body that looks all black in the semi-darkness. Beyond is a faint glimpse of the dimly starlit desert. A grim smile plays about Tarzan's lips. At least Rokoff will be cheated. How mad he will be! And death will be more merciful than he could have hoped for at the hands ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... anticipation. He had suddenly visioned—and Sherston was a man given to vivid visions—where he would have been now, at this moment, had his marriage indeed taken place this morning. He saw himself, on this beautiful starlit, moonless night, standing, along with his dear love, on the platform of a medieval tower, which, together with the picturesque farmhouse which had been tacked on to the tower about a hundred years ago, rose, close ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... starlit nights, as we sat around the old stove that fed us and warmed us and kept us cheerful, we could hear the coyotes howling down by the corrals, and their hungry, wintry cry used to remind the boys of wonderful animal stories; about gray wolves and bears in ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... but it was night now, and all the glories of a starlit sky could be seen from the corridor window, on the broad ledge of which Kate and Frances sat. The years that had passed had changed them much. Kate had a quiet power about her that could be more felt than expressed in words. Her face, quaint ...
— Daybreak - A Story for Girls • Florence A. Sitwell
... see Donnegan's flush, but she heard his teeth grit. And he slipped through the window, gesturing to George to come close. It was still darker inside the room—far darker than the starlit night outside. And the one path of lighter gray was the bed of Jack Landis. His heavy breathing was the only sound. Donnegan kneeled beside him and worked his arms under ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... Nevil, yet dressed, yet sitting deep in thought within his starlit chamber, came a messenger from the captain of the watch. "The man whom Sir John Nevil wot of was below. What disposition ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... it, for the atmosphere was as transparent as crystal; and the light of the stars that came out one by one almost cast a defined shadow upon our path, from the poplar-trees standing in long, straight rows in the hedges. If I found Olivia at the end of that starlit path my gladness in it would be completed. Yet if I found her, what then? I should see her for a few minutes in the dull salon of a school perhaps with some watchful, spying Frenchwoman present. I should ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... the up-stairs lights went out, and a deep silence fell on the old mansion. The ticking of the great clock on the stairs was the only sound. The serene peace of the starlit night settled over The Locusts like brooding wings. The clock struck one, then two, and the long hand was half-way around its face again before any other sound but the musical chime broke the stillness. Then a succession of strangled moans began to penetrate the consciousness ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... than fog, More than starlit mist! For starlight never makes a sound And fogs are ever whist— But hearken, hearken, hearken, now, For ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... astonishment of her compatriots, when they came out of the theatre it was not raining; the night was as brilliantly starlit as a night could be in Germany, and they sauntered home richly content through the narrow streets and through the beautiful old Damenthor, beyond which their hotel lay. How pretty, they said, to call that charming ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and the moon was bright At the Junior Promenade, But all the glories of starlit night Were bated before the splendid sight Of that merry throng—and my lady in white, At the ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... boudoir. A Savonnerie carpet covered the floor, the lounges and easy-chairs were heaped with cushions, and the panels hung with pastel drawings of a lively or sentimental character. The windows toward the garden were close-shuttered, but those on the farther side of the room stood open on a starlit terrace whence the eye looked out over the lagoon to ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... the new streets there was an odd light here and there in the shadowy rows of houses, and when they turned the corner the sea-wind was full in their faces. The glass roof of the Promenade Hall glimmered faintly under the immense sweep of starlit sky, and the quiet waves drew away—"C-raunch! C-r-raunch!"—from the piece of gravelled shore which the tide had reached. The good-sized, semi-detached houses built in a row opposite the promenade stood all so black and lifeless that Mr. Graham's click ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... quickened my pace, hobbling up the starlit road to the school-house. There I was driven by sheer exhaustion to the shelter of the doorway, and in the narrow refuge I huddled, waiting and listening. The keen wind found me out and seemed to take joy in rushing in on me in biting gusts and then whirling away over the flat. By and by it brought ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... Sanderson was sound asleep on the cot in the cell when a strange, scraping noise awakened him. He lay still for a long time, listening, until he discovered that the sound came from the window. Then he sat up stealthily and looked around to see, framed in the starlit gloom of the night, the face of Barney Owen, staring in through the ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... ranges of lighted windows shining through the wintry mists, wherries passing up and down with lanterns at their prows, an air of life and gaiety hanging over that river which had carried so many a noble victim to his doom yonder, where the four towers stood black against the starlit greyness, unscathed by ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... still tranquil and starlit, The sun 'twixt the wave and the west Dies in purple, and crimson, and scarlet, And gold; let us hope for the best, Since again from the earth his effulgence The darkness and damp-dews shall wipe. Kind reader, extend your indulgence To this the ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... silent. Above the cool plashing music of the fountain could be heard the distant roar of voices in great rejoicing, while upon the starlit sky was still reflected a red ominous glare from the fires raging in the city that no effort of man could subdue. At the gate leading outward to the next court stood two sentries with drawn swords gleaming in the moonbeams, mute and motionless ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... back the curtains from her window, and gazed out into the starlit night. "She needs this love," the girl murmured. "Clarence Vaughan shall learn to love her, if I can bring it about. Yes, even if I loved him, I would give him up ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... starlit night, but of course the stars did not reveal everything. The strong red light that sprang up beyond the cabins where the colored people lived, ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... to play a part in the affairs of state, though what the drama was, and what my lines might be, I could only guess. The story of Colonel D'Ortez, too, furnished me much food for reflection these long starlit nights, when I sat in my favorite seat in the very prow of the vessel. There would I sit night after night, watching the phosphorescent waves rippling against the vessel, gleaming fitful in the gloom; there observe the ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... used to congregate, and where Irving concocted some choice bits of fun for the Salamagundi Club. And here was the great drawing-room where they disposed themselves to sociable naps on Sunday afternoons, the vine-covered porch on which they sat and smoked starlit evenings, and the grassy lawn over which they rambled. And now Mr. Washington Irving had been minister to Spain, and the guest of noted people in England and on the continent. He had won fame in more than one line, and ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... illuminations were not only artistically beautiful, but afforded a proof that members of every religion and class had united to do honour to their Sovereign. Among the most striking buildings were a Mahomedan Mosque, the lines of which were clearly defined against the starlit sky by rows of pure white lanterns; a Hindoo temple, where court within court was lighted in a simple and effective manner by butties filled with cocoa-nut oil; and several Jain temples brightly illuminated with coloured lights. In the native quarter the houses were lighted up in ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... of breaking glass. Aribert went to the window and opened it. In the starlit gloom he could see that a ladder had been raised against the back of the house. He thought he heard footsteps at the ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... meal-bags, and listening to the plaintive bleat of comfortless calves and desolate sheep. As night drew on, I would select some snug little nook, where I could lie and dream as we glided along the still and starlit river, through the Highlands, perhaps, or the Palisades. The charm was mainly, of course, in the spell of youthful fancy and expectancy, which touched and transfigured the homely scene, as the moonlight touched and transfigured the silent river. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... a pith wick, floating in a saucer of oil, showed Heywood's gatekeeper sitting at his post, like a gnome in the gallery of a mine. Rudolph tore away the bar, heard the heavy gate slam shut, and found himself running down the starlit road. ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... passengers had descended from the day coach to stretch their limbs, and with a desire to avoid them Wade walked toward the rear of the train. Daylight dies hard up here in the mountains, but at last twilight held the world, a clear, starlit twilight. Overhead the vault of heaven was hung with deep blue velvet, pricked out with a million diamonds. Up the slope the camp-fire glowed ruddily. In the west the smouldering sunset embers had cooled to ashes of dove-gray and steel, against which Sierra Blanca crouched, a grim, ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... of bed, and walked over to the open window, his arm still around her. The river shone like a ribbon of silver in the moonlight; the green meadows lay in soft shadows for miles around it; in the distance the Homestead stood silhouetted against the starlit sky. ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... the two turned towards the city, whose black wall barred their way some distance ahead, and whose towers and spires stood out dimly against the starlit sky. A great silence, broken only by the soothing murmur of the river, lay on the landscape. Wilhelm cast a glance aloft at the star-sprinkled dome of heaven, ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... common, not even the lame donkey. Incredibly distant the faint sound of a railway whistle intensified the stillness. Septimus's own footsteps on the crisp grass rang loud in his ears. Yet both stillness and darkness felt companionable, in harmony with the starlit dimness of the man's mind. His soul was having its adventure while mystery filled the outer air. He walked on, wrapped in the nebulous fantasies which passed with him for thought, heedless, as he always was, of the flight of time. Once he ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... very helpful one and soon after midnight it fell almost calm. There were only light airs to urge the Seamew on. Yet she glided through the starlit murk in a ghostly fashion as though some monstrous ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... care, And perch on the sill and straightly stare Through his visions; rare, to sail Aslant with the hill and a-curve with the vale, — To flit down the shadow-shot-with-gleam, Betwixt hanging leaves and starlit stream, Hither, thither, to and fro, Silent, aimless, dayless, slow ('Aimless? Field-mice?' True, they're slain, But the night-philosophy hoots at pain, Grips, eats quick, and drops the bones In the water beneath the bough, nor moans At the death life feeds on). Robin, ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... man and the scout again disappeared. Three hours later the moon was high in the starlit sky. It was a glorious summer moon, and the whole country was bright with its ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... in my astonishment at seeing the array of articles which I had not seen for several months—especially as a few minutes before I had been outside and it was a lovely starlit night. ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... drove away through the starlit night, a costly robe protecting her from the chill of the evening, Celeste at hand for instant service, Kingston guiding the monster car, she looked back over her shoulder at the little house outlined against the sky and sighed—a ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... floor and the candle flickering, it seemed as though she had returned from a strange adventure. For a long time she remained sitting on the edge of the bed, gazing through the window into the bright, starlit night, and her soul was filled with vague ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... the land of his belief. That he meant to arrive there and to get back again was beyond all doubt his firm intention; and in the simple grandeur of that determination the weaknesses of character that were grouped about it seem unimportant. In this starlit hour among the pine woods his life came to its meridian; everything that was him was at its best and greatest there. Beneath him, on the talking tide of the river, lay the ships and equipment that represented ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... of midnight toll, And shiver in their flesh and soul; They lie on hard, cold wood or stone, Iron, and ache in every bone; They hate the night: they see no eyes Of loved ones in the starlit skies. They see the cold, dark water near; They dare not take long looks for fear They'll fall like those poor birds that see A snake's eyes staring at their tree. Some of them laugh, half-mad; and some All through ...
— Foliage • William H. Davies
... the starlit sky in a kind of wondering amazement. Was it she?—was it he?—were they really betrothed? Did he really love her? Oh, how wonderful—wonderful it was! And they said there was no real happiness ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... merciful Providence, as many of the exiles later said, that brought the commanding general himself late that starlit evening back to Prescott. His stout mountain wagon, and special six-mule team had whirled him up from the Verde after the briefest of conferences with the cavalry colonel there in command. An Indian ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... we drew close to the water's edge, and saw the still water, starlit, stretching before us, a water hen sprang from the reeds almost at our feet with her shrill warning cry, and flapped out into the middle of the dark mere, leaving a long trail of broken water behind her that gleamed for a moment with dancing star sparks from the sky, as if it might have ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... worn, he kept his deck, And peered through darkness. Ah, that night Of all dark nights! And then a speck— A light! A light! A light! A light! It grew, a starlit flag unfurled! It grew to be Time's burst of dawn. He gained a world; he gave that world Its grandest ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... Northern winter, she had lived more, lived deeper, than anywhere else in the world. But she should not come back,—there would be no place for that. Grosvenor had given its benediction,—the hills and the woods, the snowy expanses and frozen brooks, the sunsets and starlit firmament,—the blacksmith's simple content and Renault's beacon lights, Margaret's peace,—all had done their work in her. As the lumbering sleigh dragged over the Pass, she gazed back to fix its image ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... do so, and again partly succeeded. They had extended their walk all round the limits of the camp. It was a beautiful starlit night: there was a new moon, which was just going down, and an uncertain light hung about the field which was to be the scene of the conflict. It was one of those bright nights when the very aspect of nature suggests thoughts of the Eternal and the Infinite; when the most untutored ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... Overhead the starlit heavens glistened, brooding and mysterious, looking down with luminous, loving eyes upon these humble sons of men doing a good deed, from the impulse of simple, generous hearts, as upon that other Christmas morning, long ago, when the Jewish shepherds, guarding ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... comfortably settled for the night he breathed a long sigh of relief. What bliss to relax! A throbbing and burning of his muscles seemed to begin with his rest. The cool starlit night, the smell of cedar, the moan of wind, the silence—an were real to his senses. After long weeks of long, arduous travel he was home. The warmth of the welcome still lingered, but it seemed to have ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... his own words was all he heard in response. He lay quite motionless and still for some time after that, thinking about all the voice had said to him, and when finally he pushed his hat back from before his eyes, he saw the starlit sky smiling down upon him benignantly. And then, from behind a dark cloud he saw the radiant moon appear, and it seemed to him like the most beautiful woman's face he could imagine, peering out from the shadow of her own dusky hair ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... other side to be full of people. The door proved to be unlocked; and a minute later the fugitives found themselves, as they had expected, in the vestry of the church. The room was a small one, but it was lighted by a fairly large window, and as the night happened to be brilliantly fine and starlit, the gloom here was not nearly so intense as it had been in the interior of the church, consequently they were able to distinguish without much difficulty that there were indeed, as Fray Jose had said, a number of garments of some ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... shocked at anarchy, Demands an author and an aim, Seeks ever for the master-key To solve the mystery,—Whence came This starlit sea of Evermore, Without ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... as the case may be; but the lover looks at them and sees in them the magic mirror of a hundred possible worlds. How can he fathom the sea of dreams that lies there, or tell what strange fancies and reminiscences may be involved in an absent look? Is she thinking of starlit nights on some distant lake, or of the old bygone days on the hills? All her former life is told there, and yet but half told, and he longs to become possessed of all the beautiful past that she has seen. Here is a constant mystery to him, and there is a singular ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... strayed from the trodden highway for walking with upturned eyes On the way of the wind in the treetops, and the drift of the tinted rack. For the will to be losing no wonder of sunny or starlit skies I have chosen the sod for my pillow and a ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... out of the starlit garden on to a pale grey road. The hedgerows on either side loomed up out of the darkness, blacker than night. A lane led down to the village, leaving the road on the left. It was the shortest path. As Lyveden started to turn, Valerie laid a hand ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... aside the curtain of vines, for her to step out onto the starlit lawn. A salvo of barking sounded from the veranda, and Bobby Burns, who had been lying disconsolately on the steps, came bounding across the lawn, in rapture, at scent and step of the man he had ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... and he kicked one foot savagely against the turret to feel again the sensation of life in his limb. Then he struck himself in his breast with his right fist to feel it there. But in spite of all he saw a cloud of darkness form beyond the rim of the starlit horizon and come sweeping over him, coming in black waves that would rush forward and then stop—forward, and stop—forward and stop.... And the stops kept time exactly with his heart, and he knew the last stop of the wave meant the last beat of his heart—then forward ... for the last time.... ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... the starlit night; it was not in the gardens of the Tuileries nor in the Palais Royal,—it was on the Pont de la Concorde, on which we had paused, noting the starlight on the waters, that you said, pointing towards the walls of the Corps Legislatif, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the trees now, into the dim starlit glade; down the pine-strewn path, with the noise of falling water from out the beechwood at the right, and the ruined mill looming black before her. Now came the three broken steps. Yes, so far she had no need of the lantern. Round ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... and plants of which were quite new to me, and totally unlike those of my native land. Rich luxuriance of vegetation was the feature that filled my mind most. Tall palms surrounded us, throwing their broad leaves overhead and partially concealing the starlit sky. Thick tough limbs of creeping plants and wild vines twisted and twined round everything and over everything, giving to the woods an appearance of tangled impenetrability; but the beautiful leaves of some, and ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... through the streets, choosing the by-ways rather than the thoroughfares. The air was frosty, the December sky clear and starlit, above the blue or purple haze, pierced with lights, that filled the lower air; through which the college fronts, the distant spires and domes showed vaguely—as beautiful "suggestions"—"notes"—from ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the scent Of summer gardens; these can bring you all Those dreams that in the starlit silence fall: Sweet songs are full of odours. While I went Last night in drizzling dusk along a lane, I passed a squalid farm; from byre and midden Came the rank smell that brought me once again A dream of war that in the past ...
— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon
... we rested at night, sometimes in farm-houses, or in the public tambos; but frequently we took shelter within the ruins of forts or other buildings, and often we were obliged to sleep on the hard ground, with our saddles for our pillows and the starlit sky above our heads. As it was the height of summer, this mattered little. We suffered, however, much from the heat in the day-time, and we were compelled frequently to dismount to lead our horses over the rugged places ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Mrs. Pendennis was gone to bed at Fairoaks, and wondering whether her dearest Arthur was at rest after his journey. At this time Laura, too, was awake. And at this time yesterday night, as the coach rolled over silent commons, where cottage windows twinkled, and by darkling woods under calm starlit skies, Pen was vowing to reform and to resist temptation, and his heart was at home. Meanwhile the farce was going on very successfully, and Mrs. Leary, in a hussar jacket and braided pantaloons, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... marly heavens, lamp the purple prairies, I will flaunt my deathless banners down the far, unhouseled lands. In the vast and vaulted pine-gloom where the pillared forests frown, By the sullen, bestial rivers running where God only knows, On the starlit coral beaches when the combers thunder down, In the death-spell of the barrens, in the shudder of the snows; In a blazing belt of triumph from the palm-leaf to the pine, As a symbol of defiance lo! the wilderness ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... scattered on every side, and, following each other in two long lines that joined in the form of a wedge, flew up into the starlit sky, Lutra watched them eagerly for a few moments; then, without a ripple, she sank below the surface and returned to her watch on the mound. For a while after the ducks had left the pool, nothing could be heard but the ceaseless noise of falling ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... he kept his deck, And peered through darkness. Ah, that night Of all dark nights! And then a speck— A light! a light! a light! a light! It grew, a starlit flag unfurled! It grew to be Time's burst of dawn. He gained a world; he gave that world Its greatest ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... before him, and he threw off his three-cornered hat, bent forward in his saddle and spoke in his horse's ear. His was a good horse, and carried an important message. A house near the roadside showed up dark and silent against the starlit sky; the horseman rode to the door and struck the panels with his whip. A window was thrown open above: "Who's there?"—"Paul Revere: the British march to-night to Lexington and Concord: Warren, of the Committee of Safety, bids you hold your men in readiness."—"Right!"—The horseman ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... prairie, tufted with palms, green with olives, golden with orange orchards, and away in the distance an outline of gray mountains. Soon, in Jerusalem, he was among the donkeys, dogs, pilgrims, and muleteers. Out on the Mount of Olives and in starlit Bethlehem, by ancient Hebron, and then down to low-lying Jericho and at the Dead Sea, he was refreshing memory and imagination, shedding old fancies and traditions, discriminating as never before between figures of rhetoric and figures of rock and reality, while feeding his faith and ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... spontaneous poetry, in the resolve that, wherever life should lead him, his last thoughts should fall on the scenes where his childhood was passing now. It was on Esthwaite that the "huge peak" of Wetherlam, following him (as it seemed) as he rowed across the starlit water, suggested the dim conception of "unknown modes of being," and a life that is not ours. It was round Esthwaite that the boy used to wander with a friend at early dawn, rejoicing in the charm of words in tuneful order, and repeating together their favourite verses, till "sounds of exultation ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... they all went into the starlit night, trooping homeward through the snow, Jonathan and ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... of the moor. Crouching among the stones we stared intently at the silver-tipped bank in front of us. The steps grew louder, and through the fog, as through a curtain, there stepped the man whom we were awaiting. He looked round him in surprise as he emerged into the clear, starlit night. Then he came swiftly along the path, passed close to where we lay, and went on up the long slope behind us. As he walked he glanced continually over either shoulder, like a man who ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... spread above and before us like a great blot of ghostly grey against the starlit sky, began perceptibly to pale and brighten until it stood out clear and distinct, bathed in richest primrose light, with the shadow of the mast drawn across it in ebony-black. Striking the top of the sail first, the light swept gradually down; and in less than a minute the whole ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... the Barracouta as she jogged smoothly over the starlit sea toward Tarpaulin Island. By the dim light of two lanterns, Jim, Throppy, Budge, and Filippo were busy baiting the trawls with herring and coiling them into the tubs in the standing-room. Percy had ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... those waters. The transport on which I went to Porto Rico, in the summer of 1898, carried, among other troops, a battery of light artillery. It had an unusually good bugler, and his sounding of "taps" on those soft, starlit nights remains with me as one of the sweetest sounds I have ever heard. The shrieks, squalls, and roars of those opera people were in a wholly different class. About seventy-five miles east of Nuevitas is Gibara, merely a shipping port for the inland city of Holguin. The former is only one ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... In starlit night along the shade Of our dusk tombs our spirits glide; We hear the echoing of the wind, We breathe the sighs ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... company got dull, and broke up into groups, to retire to the hay-loft where I slept, and pass there whole hours seated on my chest. The loft was a vast apartment, some fifty or sixty feet in length, with its naked rafters raised little more than a man's height over the floor; but in the starlit nights, when the openings in the wall assumed the character of square patches of darkness-visible stamped upon utter darkness, it looked quite as well as any other unlighted place that could not be seen; and in nights brightened by the moon, the pale beams, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... began to take leave. Even when he was sitting in the carriage, the old man was still shy and constrained; but the warm soft air, the light breeze, and the light shadows, the scent of the grass and the birch-buds, the peaceful light of the starlit, moonless night, the pleasant tramp and snort of the horses—all the witchery of the roadside, the spring and the night, sank into the poor German's soul, and he was himself the first to begin a conversation ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... them from a street lamp outside, but those at the back were dark, although, after a while, we got accustomed to the dark, and could see to some extent. None of the blinds was drawn, and although there was no moon, it was a clear, starlit night. ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... morning. The sun had climbed into a world that held in remembrance only a succession of golden days and starlit nights. The air was fragrant with ripening fruit, and there was a mad little bird on a tree outside the door nearly bursting his throat with joy of living. He had forgotten that summer was over, that winter must ever come; ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... from that of Wavre—but just before dawn all was still. The stream of convoys which bore the wounded along the road to Brussels from Mont Saint Jean and Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte had momentarily ceased its endless course. The sky had that perfect serenity of a midsummer's night, starlit and azure with the honey-coloured moon sinking slowly down towards the west. Here at the edge of the wood the air had a sweet smell of wet earth and damp moss and freshly cut hay: it had all the delicious softness of a loved ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... the Creator; he must surround us here with the memories of our lost Paradise; he must repeat to us the mysterious words and tones which God confides to his heart in his lonely walks to the holy temple, in his solitary musings in the dim forests, or in his prayerful hours under the starlit heavens ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... though so natural, shocked him. He arrested such evident grief at once and very soon he stood up to pray. So prayed the gray fathers of the world, Terah and Abram, Lot and Jacob; and John stood at the open window with his troubled face lifted to the starlit sky. His soul was seeking earnestly that depth in our nature where the divine and human are one, for when the brain is stupefied by the inevitable and we know not what to abandon and what to defend, that ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... slipped through the dimly lighted cabins and passages, and were soon safely in the stateroom. Bidding both good-bye, and promising to be on board again at 8 in the morning, I went ashore and straight to bed, and soon was dreaming of starlit seas, of tropic woods and Summer bowers, white and sweet with May blossoms. My health then, as now, was perfect, and I awoke fresh and hopeful. After breakfasting on a dish of prawns and another of soft-shelled crabs, I was off across the bay. Soon after 8 I knocked ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... movement, as though urged by some terror, she turned quickly away, and went swiftly to the open window. She looked down into the narrow, dark street, dimly illuminated by an occasional lamp; she looked up to the starlit space of sky visible above the house-roofs and chimneys, and neither above nor below did she find any comfort; for a sudden awful realization of death had come to her in the darkness and silence, almost too keen ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... of uplifting thoughts in it." The thoughts might be uplifting to Almena, but they did not elevate my spirits. As for the story—well, the hero was a young gentleman who was poor but tremendously clever and handsome, and the heroine had eyes "as dark and deep as starlit pools." The poor but beautiful person met the pool-eyed one at a concert, where he sat, "his whole soul transfigured by the music," and she had been "fascinated in spite of herself" by the look on his face. I read as far as that and dropped the ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... and memories of the scenes we were just about to leave: Garden Lake, with its hundred islands; the rapids out of Round Pond; the countless vistas of forest, crimson and gold in the autumn sunshine; and the starlit nights we had spent watching in cold, cramped positions for the wary moose on lonely lakes among the hills. The hum of the professor's voice in time grew more soothing. A nod or a grunt was all the reply he looked for. Fortunately, he loathed interruptions. ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... to die in all palaces," he would say,—"It is only in the glorious world of Nature, under the sunlit or starlit expanse of heaven, that the god in us can live; and it was not without some subtle cause of intended instruction to mankind that the Saviour always taught His followers in ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... British troops come and go than any other town in northern France—and waited there for the battalion to form up. It was a beautiful summer night, the square tower of the cathedral and the Moorish spire of the Hotel de Ville forming perfect silhouettes against the starlit sky. ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... the jeer and taunt of his men. The regulars were soon to come and replace those volunteers, said the wiseacre of his cabinet, therefore strike now before the trained and disciplined troops arrive and sweep these big boors into the sea. And on the still, starlit night, sooner perhaps than his confederates within the walls intended, the rebel leader struck, and, long before the dawn of the lovely Sunday morn that followed, the fire flashed from forty thousand rifles in big semicircle ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... difficulty in securing permission to be present at a mitote, which was to be given at a ranch in the neighbourhood. On March 24th, a little before sunset, we started out on a ride of an hour and a half, ascending some 3,000 feet on a winding Indian trail up to a high mesa. It was a starlit, beautiful night, but the magnificent view which this mesa commanded could only be surmised. There are a few ranches here owned by people from the pueblo below, a man sometimes living in his ranch here during the wet season, ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... outside awakened him, and he hurried out to find Skipper Zeb and Toby preparing breakfast over an open fire. It was early. The sky was studded with stars, and he stood for a moment to look out over the starlit and now peaceful waters of the bay. No longer were the shrieking winds and the booming breakers to be heard, and no sound broke the silence other than the gentle rhythmic lap of the waters ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... a sleepless brain and weary, half-closed eyes. She turns her face where the purple silk is spread, Still sweet with delicate perfume his presence shed. Her arms remembered his vanished beauty still, And, reminiscent of clustered curls, her fingers thrill. While the wonderful, Starlit Night wears slowly on Till the light of another day, serene and wan, Pierces the ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... silence. Visions of travel through the air in distant lands, above the rhododendron forests of the Himalayas, or the green Savannahs of the Orinoco, the coral isles of the Pacific; yea, further still, through the starlit crypts of space to other spheres were hovering in my fancy. The singular history of the man, too, had touched my feelings. Nevertheless, I hesitated to accept his offer there and then. It was hardly a proposal to decide upon without ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... of the starlit arch, about to descend to her two companions, perceived that they were in conversation with a stranger, she hesitated, and in a moment withdrew. Then the elder of the travellers, exchanging a glance with his friend, bid good even ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... a starlit heaven! He had reached the mouth of the sewer and was in the river. For a moment he lay still, floating upon his back to rest. Above him he heard the tread of a sentry along the river front, and the sound ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... yearning for a great adventure out in the unknown, who had dreamed of it so long that at last I believed it really awaited me. And it has, indeed, fallen to my lot, the great adventure of the ice, deep and pure as infinity; the silent, starlit polar night; nature itself in its profundity; the mystery of life; the ceaseless circling of the universe; the feast of death—without suffering, without regret—eternal in itself. Here in the great night thou standest in all thy naked pettiness, face to face ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... seated myself to wait when my keen ears detected something, then slight rustlings, then soft steps, and a dark form emerged from the blackness into the little starlit glade. Sally came swiftly towards me and right into my arms. That was sure a sweet moment. Through the excitement and dark boding thoughts of the day, I had forgotten that she would do just this thing. And now I anticipated tears, clingings, fears. ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... to his feet as the men cheered, and stood with his sword hanging by the knot to his wrist, holding on by the rough stone wall, looking over into the starlit gloom at a body of French sailors apparently about to attack. Just then an officer ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... in the dusky room or walking home through the blue evening, all things grow strangely softened and united; the magic of the old world reappears. The commonplace streets take on something of the grandeur and solemnity of starlit avenues of Egyptian temples the public squares in the mingled glow and gloom grow beautiful as the Indian grove where Sakuntala wandered with her maidens; the children chase each other through the dusky shrubberies, as they flee past they look at us with long remembered glances: lulled ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... wildness, nothing else. The fields Hughie cultivated stretched to the north from the kitchen windows. There in the forest to the south where the river curved off at a tangent and flowed directly east, Brian had had his camp. On farther Joan had never cared to go. Where did she go now in the starlit darkness, climbing down the wistaria ladder with a cloak around her shoulders? To what did she venture through the solitude of whispering trees and the gloom of the ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... of a soul in her singing, out there in the moonlight. Signor Firenzo would not have lectured and entreated her in vain. She knew now what he meant. She had been longing to sing, many an evening on the starlit lagoons, ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... of thought profound, When Memory's heart, depress'd with gloom, Laments upon the sculptured mound, And dreams beside the visioned tomb; When voices from the dead arise, Like music o'er the starlit sea, And holiest commune sanctifies The Hour ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various
... journey went on with varying fortune, his blind groping and stumblings alternating with the starlit patches where the woods broke. But it went on deliberately to the end with an ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... shook his head, and, gazing up at the starlit heavens, wandered off into dreams of the life he would like to lead but from which he seemed inexorably shut out. The seriousness of life was striking deeper than ever into Joe's heart, and he lay silent, thinking hard. A mumble of heavy voices came to them from the Reindeer; and from the land ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... brothers, homeless in life, but here at rest and at peace. A great cross stands upon the lonely shore. The moon sheds its rays upon it in silent benediction and floods the garden of the unknown, unmourned dead with its soft light. Out on the Sound the fishermen see it flashing white against the starlit sky, and bare their heads reverently as their boats speed by, borne upon the wings of ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... said her husband. "I am a knight, a simple starlit knight, a Quixote of to-day. Your ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... We gathered on the starlit balcony. The city stretched around us. There was as yet no alarm. No swimming figures near here; but a distance away we saw the towering conclave globe, with its audience just beginning to emerge, like ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... of the forest she had seen at last the welcome gleam of water, starlit, beautiful and calm. Stern saw it, too. A demon now, he charged the snarling ring. Back he drove them; he turned, seized the bag, and again plunged ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... bargaining fills our ears. Or if we withdraw into some still chamber, yet the walls built by hired hands offend, and the doorposts of sapless timber; no high influence can penetrate to us save through the close court of memory, and compared with the breezy starlit meadows, how poor an avenue ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... on a winter's morn, Eyes through her silken curtains the poor drudge Who with numb blacken'd fingers makes her fire— At cock-crow, on a starlit winter's morn, 305 When the frost flowers deg. the whiten'd window-panes— And wonders how she lives, and what the thoughts Of that poor drudge may be; so Rustum eyed The unknown adventurous youth, who from afar Came seeking Rustum, and defying forth 310 ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... step of the way, so that she is frequently three hours in going the distance of a mile. We watched the procession a long time, winding away through the streets—a line of torches, and songs, and incense, and noisy jubilee—under the sweet starlit heaven. ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... I sit alone in my splendour upon the roof of the ancient halls or wander through the starlit palace gardens, I call to mind that great catch of fishes in the English sea and of what followed after. I call to mind also my prosperity and wealth as one of the first merchants of London Town and what followed after. I call ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... came to the surface, Bertha Kircher saw that they were in a large lagoon and that the bright stars were shining high above them, while on either hand domed and minareted buildings were silhouetted sharply against the starlit sky. Metak swam swiftly to the north side of the lagoon where, by means of a ladder, the two climbed out upon the embankment. There were others in the plaza but they paid but little if any attention to the ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Within himself he reasoned that he would see nothing, and yet some unusual instinct moved him to caution. At regular intervals he stopped to listen and to sniff the air for an odor of smoke. More and more he became like a beast of prey. He left the last bush behind him. Ahead of him the starlit space was now unbroken by a single shadow. Weird whispers came with a low wind that ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... up with the lark, and the grandfather would never let her go to bed after hours; so this evening he only called good-night through the open door and started home at once with the child, and the two climbed under the starlit sky back to ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... Has woman no power to rouse to nobler deeds The heart of man, and fill his higher needs! Oh, God! in heaven, guide thy child to-night, Upon my longings shed thy holiest light. Oh! mother, with thy tender, loving eyes, Look down upon me from the starlit skies." ...
— Love or Fame; and Other Poems • Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
... portraits of a shoemaker and his wife, to pay for shoes to enable him to continue his journeys. He could sleep on a steamer's deck, with a few shavings for a bed, and, wrapped in a blanket, look up at the starlit sky, and give thanks to a Providence that he believed was ever guarding and ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... dream she said nothing to any except to the old man who alone seemed to understand her a little. He did not laugh, but looked with thoughtful eyes intent, into the distance, away to the starlit sky, and it seemed to her that he also was trying to remember a forgotten dream of life. And seeing this she put her hand in his trustingly, and they two knew well each other's thoughts though never ...
— The Strange Little Girl - A Story for Children • V. M. |
