"Unearthly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... freezing in the Baltic with an eccentric nonentity who bored me! Yet, as I smoked my cigar in the ghastly splendour of the empty smoking-room, the subject came up again. Was there anything in it? There were certainly no alternatives at hand. And to bury myself in the Baltic at this unearthly time of year had at least a smack of ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... of culture, and his reason, marveled over the reconciliation of such antitheses. On the one hand one saw the wildest struggle for gain, and love of destruction; on the other hand were the daily examples of the kindest human nature, self-sacrifice for fellow-creatures, and an almost unearthly devotion to heroic conceptions of duty. Now it appeared as if the primitive animal nature in man were let loose, and bellowing for joy that the chains in which he had lain were burst, and now again as if the noblest virtues were proudly blossoming, only ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... you were with a Scottish family, and wrote to you to the care of some laird with an unearthly name." ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... length, gazing down into her upturned face where the dusk and the moon-fire met and blended in a radiance of unearthly beauty, "is it not wonderful that, all unwittingly and unconscious of each other's existence, we have been brought together from the ends of the earth?" She was about to reply when a voice, close at hand, cut her short. It ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... was of a ghostly whiteness. The rain had drenched him to the skin; his clothes clung to his lean body, that shook as if it would come apart; his eyes flew wildly, and his teeth chattered against each other. The fears and torture of his mind gave something unearthly to his look, that made Paul start back. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... exist, this was an undeniable fact; and since the human mind dotes on objects of wonder, you can understand the worldwide excitement caused by this unearthly apparition. As for relegating it to the realm of fiction, that ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... keys of the Secret Things! None knoweth them besides Himself He knoweth that which is in the dry land and in the sea!' Again broke out the unearthly ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... to the horizon a solid pile of unearthly clouds came up from the southeast; their bodies were singularly and unnaturally black, and mottled with copper-color, and hemmed with a fiery yellow. And these infernal clouds towered up their heads, pressing forward as if they all strove for ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... appeared determined to fix Olavida's regards by a gaze like that of fascination. Olavida rocked, reeled, grasped the arm of a page, and at last, closing his eyes for a moment, as if to escape the horrible fascination of that unearthly glare (the Englishman's eyes were observed by all the guests, from the moment of his entrance, to effuse a most fearful and preternatural luster), exclaimed, "Who is among us?—Who?—I cannot utter a ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... women, and on this particular night I was doomed to the unpleasant surprise of being received with a sharp rebuke from Mrs Bingley, who roundly asserted that she would stand this sort of thing no longer. That she had no notion of being disturbed at such unearthly hours by the noisy advent of a disagreeably damp and cold husband, and that if I intended to continue to be an agent of the Shipwrecked Mariners' Society, she would insist upon a ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... slender form leaned slightly; and her hair Fell 'round her loosely, in long curling strands All unconfined, and as by loving hands Tossed into bright confusion. Standing there, Her starry eyes uplifted, she did seem Like some unearthly creature of a dream; Until she started forward, gliding slowly, And broke the breathless silence, speaking lowly, As one grown meek, and humble in an hour, Bowing before some new and ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... moving objects became visible on a hill-crest bare of the climbing firs. Geoffrey watched them with straining eyes, and it was a wonderful picture that he looked upon—black gorge, darkening forest, drifting haze in the hollows, and unearthly splendors above; but he regarded it only as a fit setting for the slight figure in the foreground that swayed to the stride of a galloping horse. He was not surprised—it seemed perfectly appropriate that Helen should ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... are royal, as one might have seen. The loftiness of your despotic sway, Your strange aloofness and unearthly mien (Yet regal) might have been A full assurance of monarchic clay. Had but the fates run kindly, at this day Yourself should be a king of orient fame, Chief of the princely house that ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... been introduced by a man whom I barely knew! It did not appear that he, on his side, knew or cared about anything I had said or done in the world. He simply obeyed the national instinct of courtesy and helpfulness. And he was as good as his word. Arriving in Boston at a somewhat unearthly hour in the morning, I found my room allotted me and the club servants ready to receive me with every attention. I felt like the Prince in the fairy tale, only that I had done nothing whatever to oblige the ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... other had the form of a man, but was huger far. It was he they called Grendel. These two haunt a fearful spot, a land of untrodden bogs and windy cliffs. A waterfall plunges into the blackness below, and twisted trees with gnarled roots overhang it. An unearthly fire is seen gleaming there night after night. None can tell the depth of the stream. Even a stag, hunted to death, will face his foes on the bank rather than plunge into those waters. It is a fearful spot. You are our only help, dare ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... he could hardly have a place in the dream. The real youth of the dream had been of an unearthly beauty, with a rose-leaf complexion and lustrous curls massed above a brow of marble. The stranger had not been of an unearthly beauty. To be sure, he was very good to look at, with his wide-open blue eyes and his yellow hair, and he had appeared uncommonly fresh and clean about the ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... equality reigns as in the San Carlos or in the Cathedral. The first object of interest is the large collection of stone idols which have been dug up from time to time in and about the Grand Plaza. There are dog-faced idols, and apish gods, and unearthly things, besides the sacrificial stone, and a rude attempt to represent a goddess. Whether or no this was a sort of Aztec Lady of Remedies I did not learn. The Aztecs might easily have produced these works without exhibiting much civilization; but I have heard it surmised that ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... the Christ? Was there a ripple of interest and expectancy through the crowd? Did any realize the unearthly beauty and spiritual power of his presence? We know not. Scripture is silent, only telling us that on the following day, when, with two disciples, he looked on Jesus as He walked, and repeated his affirmation, "Behold ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... said, kneeling on one knee so as to be nearer, and to be able to speak lower, 'you are so unearthly in your unselfishness, that I dare the less to put before you the one way in which I could take Ella home to him. It is if you would overlook the past, and give me a ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... saving of Ella—she told of Bennie, explaining that he was the same child whom the Young Doctor had met in the hall. She told of Mrs. Volsky's effort to better herself, and of Jim's snake-like smoothness. And then she told of Lily—Lily with her almost unearthly beauty and her piteous physical condition. As she told of Lily the Superintendent's kind eyes filled with tears, and her ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... he said constantly—for he carried his beads loose in his trousers' pockets that he might tell them as he walked the streets—transformed themselves into coronals of flowers of such vague unearthly texture that they seemed to him as hueless and odourless as they were nameless. He offered up each of his three daily chaplets that his soul might grow strong in each of the three theological virtues, in faith in ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... miles they rode upward through golden forests of aspens. On either hand rose thick walls of snow-white boles, and in the mystic glow of their gilded leaves the face of the girl shone with unearthly beauty. It was as if the very air had become auriferous. Magic coins dangled from the branches. Filmy shadows fell over her hair and down her strong young arms like priceless lace. Gold, gold! Everywhere ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... what it was, in her touch or voice, that made that song the most unearthly I have ever heard in my life, or can imagine. There was something fearful in the reality of it. It was as if it had never been written, or set to music, but sprung out of passion within her; which found imperfect utterance in ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... could hear the sound in the distance—the thunder of the captains of the storm and the shouting; but still so faint, so vague, so indeterminate and unearthly that it seemed like the sound ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... at the town office next morning in a frame of mind distinctly unamiable. Though his house was far out of the village, the unearthly racket of the night had floated up to him—squawking horns, and clanging bells, and exploding powder. The hundred cannons at sunrise brought a vigorous word for each reverberation. At an early hour Hiram Look had come over, gay in his panoply as chief ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... the crank, and the thing gave just one unearthly, agonizing groan and, I imagined, rolled its eyes back, and gasping for breath, died a ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... ended, and I heard the unearthly reverberations of the fiendish cheering by the mighty host, while the form of Satan vanished; but from his waning shadows Blackana came forth and in death-like silence again resumed his sullen ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... study, could never be followed with one's eye. The paper was captured in a French prize somewhere some time in the last century, and part of the figure was shaggy, and therein little spiders found habitation, and went visiting their acquaintances across the shiny places. The color was an unearthly pink and a forbidding maroon, with dim white spots, which gave it the appearance of having moulded. It made you low-spirited to look long in the mirror; and the great lounge one could not have cheerful associations with, after hearing that Miss Brandon herself did not like it, ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... was the figure of a man going round and round with great plunging strides, over the road, across the river, and through the mill-pond behind, blowing a horn in fierce, unearthly blasts, and crying in a voice of triumph and mockery, first to this worker and then to that, "No use, I tell thee. Thou can never put it out. It's fire from heaven. Didn't I ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... the world did you make up such an unearthly yodel?" demanded Elinor, preparing to descend from her chair of state. "I hope I'm not expected ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... the harbor. Behind me, in the kitchen, I heard my wife singing. Sometimes now her spirits were fitfully high, and then she would sing the old songs of her girlhood. But even in her singing was something strange, as if a wailing, unearthly cry rang through it. Nothing about her was sadder than ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... dreads, worriments, anxieties, anticipations, expectations, pessimisms, morbidities, and the whole ghostly train of fateful shapes which our fellow-men, and especially physicians, are ready to help us conjure up, an array worthy to rank with Bradley's 'unearthly ballet of ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... flat-nosed dolls and armless grenadiers, the cast-off playthings of a flock of brothers and sisters—a very chaos of rapture for the fingers of infancy! Only a few expensive toys from a fashionable purveyor—things that went by machinery, darting forward a little way with convulsive jerks and unearthly choking noises, and then tumbling ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... say, but the attempt produced in reality an unearthly screech of delight, with which he went off on a series of bounds worthy of a kangaroo, lasting all the way to his grandfather's, and taking him there in half ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... teach me Irish words. This she did, but agreed with her sister Biddy that it was all very uncanny, and that there must have been a time when I was perfectly familiar with the owld language, as I had such unearthly fondness for it. ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... sects, the Jains set the highest value on Tapas, but chiefly as a purification of the soul and a means of obtaining an unearthly state of pure knowledge[165]. In theory the Buddha rejected it; he taught a middle way, rejecting alike self-indulgence and self-mortification. But even Pali Buddhism admits such practices as the Dhutangas ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... shadows growing deeper, sad night-breezes sorrowing by, Sighing 'mid the leafless bushes bending o'er the sullen stream, Wailing 'mid the fire-stained ruins darkly rising 'gainst the gleam Of the wild unearthly twilight. In the shivering evening air Cheerless lie the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... more, and lay down again, but not to sleep. The wind seemed to be rising, and made a wild, unearthly sound as it surged through the trees which surrounded and imprisoned her, and shut her out from the world in which she was born and in which she ought to live. There was a far-away sound which came to her ears once, twice, thrice, ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... sleep. He felt in his body the strain of his quick sequence of spiritual adventures. He was dog-tired. But his brain was furiously out of hand: no stopping it. And the night was stifling. And all the while, in the dead silence, as though his soul had ears, there was a sound. It was a very faint, unearthly sound, and seemed to come from nowhere, yet to have a meaning. He feared he was ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... itself on a great flat dish, and shining pale and green through the clear golden sauce that was poured over it. I was just finishing my first luscious, liquid stalk, and indulging in anticipations of my second, when the highest, the shrillest, the most piercing, and most unearthly voice I ever heard, ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... frightening these spirits away. Usually the priests would make the loudest and most discordant noises possible. They would blow horns, beat upon rude drums, clash cymbals, and in the meantime utter the most unearthly yells. If the noise-remedy failed, they would implore the aid of some ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Yell? I couldn't do it for the life of me. Get up and look for him? Wild horses could not have dragged a toe of me out of bed. Stay where I was till the unearthly truant returned? No, thank you. At the bare notion my rigid muscles relaxed, my erect hair lay down, and I collapsed, a limp heap, on to the pillow, with every available sheet and blanket drawn over ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... avoided. This pretence was, that all her ghost stories had occurred to her own relations. Politeness towards a meritorious family, therefore, forbade my doubting them, and they acquired an air of authentication that impaired my digestive powers for life. There was a narrative concerning an unearthly animal foreboding death, which appeared in the open street to a parlour-maid who 'went to fetch the beer' for supper: first (as I now recall it) assuming the likeness of a black dog, and gradually rising on its hind-legs and swelling ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... mention with respect as a violin. From that grinding lilt, with which the blind man, seeking pence, accompanies the beat of paddle wheels across the ferry, there is surely a difference rather of kind than of degree to that unearthly voice of singing that bewails and praises the destiny of man at the touch of the true virtuoso. Even that you may perhaps enjoy; and if you do so you will own it impossible to enjoy it more keenly than here, im Schnee ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in a sunny valley was the Castle of Content, wherein Elaine's father reigned as Lord. Upon the hills close at hand were the orchards, which were now in bloom. A faint, unearthly sweetness came with every passing breeze, and was wafted through the open windows of the Castle, where, upon the upper floor, Elaine was wont to sit with her ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... whither—away, as one who is being pursued by an unearthly phantom—deep catchings of the breath, as will follow undue bodily exertion, telling of something not right within; wild, low, abrupt sounds breaking from him at intervals—thus he flew, turning to the left, which led him towards the river. Anywhere from the dreaded cloisters; ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... she must be drowned," when, lo and behold! she would appear twenty yards off, a little black ball with a yellow bill, only to take breath and plunge again. Sometimes in a hard winter we would hear high in the sky the cry of a weird pack of hounds. Nearer and nearer drew that unearthly music, till we held our breath in a kind of delightful terror, and then above our heads appeared a flock of wild swans on the search for water; and down they dropped, like white cannon-balls, into the lake, sending a mass of spray ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... unearthly! Again Travis blinked, brought his hand up to his head as he continued to view the browsers. There were three of them: two larger and with horns, the other a smaller beast with less of the ragged fur and only the beginning button of a protuberance ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... length into a profound slumber, motionless and apparently breathless, her head resting in my lap. I myself could no longer resist the inclination to sleep, in spite of the continual roar of the cannon. Suddenly I was aroused by a wild, unearthly scream close to my ear; my companion stood upright beside me, her arms raised, and her head bent forward in the attitude ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... from the ocean-ferries. There is generally a tug, perhaps with a slow convoy, to be waited for or circumnavigated ere the "slip" can be entered. And they run so close in-shore that the pilot has to be wary, and in some cases to emerge with a series of unearthly steam screeches, lest he step upon one of them with his great "horseshoe" of a ferry-boat. The steam-yacht is the most graceful as well as agile of the species, as certainly it ought to be when as much money is sometimes put into one as would buy a Raphael or build ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... excavations behind the crypt have been haunted by the Evil One and his coadjutors, who break forth from time to time in unearthly noises, racings, scamperings, moanings and yellings, and scarcely a man, woman or child in the vicinity but has heard them with their own veritable ears. Many special services of exorcism have been performed in the church above to meet the occasions as they might arise, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... rifles in the hands of all parties, the Japs being still covered; while beyond, at sea, the two boats cleaving the water, their objective point the shadowy schooner, looking like a phantom ship, made a picture of weird excitement in an unearthly setting. The seconds seemed like hours. The row-boat was nearer the schooner and was traveling fast, but the launch was speeding even more rapidly, throwing up a high wave at the bow. It looked as though both boats would reach the schooner's ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... gave an angry side glance at her load and shifted her position once or twice. Then she threw herself headlong into the air and landed stiff-legged, uttering at the same time her unearthly protest. First she dove straight through the crowd, then proceeded in a circle, her heels describing wonderful curves and sweeps in the air. Her pack, too, began to come to pieces and to take forced flights ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... An unearthly, piercing yell split the forest air. Then Stern saw the obeah, his jaw hanging oddly awry, all loose and shattered, fall headlong ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... a wild, unearthly cry. At first I imagined he had lost his footing, and was falling headlong into one of the yawning gulfs. Nothing of the kind. I saw him, his arms spread out to their widest extent, his legs stretched apart, standing upright before an enormous pedestal, ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... round. Of a sudden an unearthly yell rent the air, and half a dozen dusky figures leapt from the bushes in the distance. Flourishing curiously-shaped weapons, very like tomahawks, they rushed, yelling and screaming, towards the ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... last twenty-four hours had melted it like the pearl in the golden cup of Cleopatra, and it lay in the West a fused mass of transparent brightness. The reflection from the edges of a hundred clouds wandered hither and thither, over rock and tree and flower, giving a strange, unearthly brilliancy to the most ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... interrupted by the most unearthly yell that any member of the Overland party had ever heard. The yell ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... Cafe, at the edge of the little town, just above the beach. Across a space of sea at high tide, and of wet sand and a paved causeway slimy with seaweed at the ebb, St. Michael's Mount loomed, dark against a sunset sky, pale and unearthly in the dawn, an embattled ship riding anchored on full waters, or ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... a revolutionary age. He is the poet of hope, as Wordsworth is the poet of wisdom. He has been charged with being intangible and unearthly, but he is so only in the sense in which the future is intangible and unearthly. He is no more unearthly than the skylark or the rainbow or the dawn. His world, indeed, is a universe of skylarks and rainbows and dawns—a universe ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... suddenly as she looked down upon them and, with aching eyes, tried to pierce the gloom. She was shivering in spite of the mildness of this early autumnal night: her overwrought fancy was peopling the lonely walls with unearthly shapes strolling along, discussing in spectral language a strange duel which was to take place here between a noted butcher of men and a mad Englishman ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... barracoon, a large square of thick cane-work and thatch about eight feet high, the Fetish house of the "Jinkimba" or circumcised boys, who received us with unearthly yells. After a march of an hour and three quarters,'covering five indirect and three direct miles in a south-eastern rhumb, we reached Banza Nkaye, the royal village, where the sympiesometer showed 1430 feet. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... behind her again, and Tabitha, smiling sympathetically at the girl's attempt at bravery, began to cover the mound of soft, white dough in the huge pan, when a wild, unearthly shriek echoed through the house, followed by the sharp crack of a pistol, and the muffled fall of ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... attribute to some known source; yet on this particular night—my second night alone in the longboat—I was sitting comfortably enough in the stern-sheets, steering by a star—for I had no lantern wherewith to illuminate my compass—and thinking of nothing in particular, when suddenly a most unearthly cry came pealing out of the darkness on the starboard beam, seemingly not half a dozen yards away, and was ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... their tongues, or looked on their frenzied gestures, can ever forget them, or wonder why the ancients painted the Furies in the form of women. Words cannot portray the excitement of such a scene. The hair of the frantic actors is streaming in the wind; stones and clods seem only embodiments of the unearthly yells and shrieks that fill the air; and yet it was such beings that grace made to be "last at the cross ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... receive? Why would I so much rather go to the East than to the West Indies? Am I wholly deceiving my own heart? and have I not a spark of true missionary zeal? Lord, give me to understand and imitate the spirit of those unearthly words of thy dear Son: 'It is enough for the disciple that he be as his Master, and the servant as his Lord.' 'He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me.' Gloria ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... the stomach, a devilled duck or twae, and some London porter." Auld Thomas found them, nevertheless, well disposed for "breakfast" on their arrival at Twizzlehope; and this being over, he delighted them with one of the most hideous and unearthly of all the specimens of "riding music," and, moreover, with considerable libations of whiskey-punch, manufactured in a certain wooden vessel, resembling a very small milk-pail, which he called "Wisdom," because it "made" only a few spoonfuls of spirits—though he had the art of replenishing ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... subdued her physical strength, straight as an arrow. Her complexion was fair, and her features, rather pointed than full, were regular and well formed. The eyes, of light blue, generally wore a calm and gentle expression, but kindled with an unearthly light when conversing on divine subjects. Then her whole soul flashed in her countenance, and her features, lit as with sunshine, indicated how deeply her spirit had drank of that "stream which maketh glad the ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... breathing hard for a minute or two: but Romola was not prompted to speak again. It was useless for her mind to attempt any contact with the mind of this unearthly brother: as useless as for her hand to try and grasp a shadow. When he spoke again ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... pattern designed by Commander Potvin himself without the assistance of his wife. It was bruited about that the cook, housemaid, and parlourmaid,—the nurse alone being excused,—were turned out of their beds at the unearthly hour of 5.30 a.m. and that, as a punishment for "being found asleep in their hammocks after the hands had been called," they were rousted out at ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... got quiet again, and we heard nothing more for an hour. Johnson touched me again and whispered, "Yonder they come again; look, look!" I could not see them; was too sleepy for that. Sloan could not see them, either. Johnson pulled down, and another unearthly squall rended the night air. The streaks of day had begun to glimmer over Missionary Ridge, and I could see in the dim twilight the Yankee guard not fifty yards off. Said I, "Boys, let's fire into them and run." We took deliberate aim and fired. At that they raised, I thought, ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... Varangian's grasp, had not Hereward, by a violent exertion of his great strength, preserved the advantage he had gained, and raised his poniard to end the strife for ever; but a loud chuckling laugh of an unearthly sound was at this instant heard. The Varangian's extended arm was seized with vigour, while a rough arm embracing his throat, turned him over on his back, and gave the French Count an opportunity of ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... with, what softness the scepticism of Jarno, the commercial spirit of Werner, the reposing polished manhood of Lothario and the Uncle, the unearthly enthusiasm of the Harper, the gay animal vivacity of Philina, the mystic, ethereal, almost spiritual nature of Mignon, are blended together in this work; how justice is done to each, how each lives freely in his proper element, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... curiosity in her question. The venerable pastor of the church which she attended in New York had not seemed to belong to the same race as herself. His hair was so white, his face so bloodless, his life so saintly, and his sermons so utterly beyond her, that he appeared as dim and unearthly as one of the Christian Fathers. A young theologian on the way to that same ghostly state was an object of piquant interest. She had never had a flirtation with a man of this character, therefore there was all the zest of novelty. Had she been less fearless, she would have shrunk from ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... the Christmas time; and what with continual choral services, and evergreens, and unearthly music in the still cold nights, there was a sort of exaltation in the air; and Nan wished to be practical. In consequence, Lady Beresford was ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... the Major woke with a start, bewildered by an unearthly sound that smote his ears. The wind had risen to a gale, tearing the fleece from the sky, so that the moon peered down upon a sea of treetops turbulent with the ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... of the wood made one noise, succeeded by an unearthly stillness, then the noise of a window hastily opened. Burleigh fled hastily down the stairs, and flinging wide the hall door, shouted ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... the shore, Like moons emerging from a sable screen; Swimming abreast, what haughty king and queen, With arching necks their regal course they bore. Winona marveled at the unwonted sight Of white swans swimming there at dead of night, Her frenzy half beguiling with the scene. Unearthly heralds sure, for in their wake What ruddy furrows seamed the placid lake. Almost beneath her feet they came, so near She might have tossed a pebble on their backs, When lo, their long necks pierced the waters clear, As down they dove, two shafts of purest ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... There was an unearthly silence, all looking towards the newcomer. Those who had just learnt that he was in the neighbourhood recognized him instantly; those who did not were perplexed. Nobody noted Bathsheba. She was leaning on the stairs. Her brow had heavily contracted; her whole face was pallid, her ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... their misfortunes had arisen from the neglect of this proper duty to the dead, and they were sure that the restless spirit of this person haunted the waters around them at night, as they heard strange and unearthly cries from the sea. And one night, in bright moonlight, they saw and heard something which looked like a human being swimming near ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... separate plank of which those boats were made. But skillfully manoeuvred, incessantly wheeling like trained charges in the field; the boats for a while eluded him; though, at times, but by a plank's breadth; while all the time, Ahab's unearthly slogan tore every other cry but his ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... (Vol. vii. passim).—I have never met, in any work on folk-lore and popular superstitions, any mention of that unearthly bell, whose sound is borne on the death-wind, and heralds his doom to the hearer. Mickle alludes to it in his fine ballad ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... of Lovers meet, There's a sweetness in air, unearthly sweet, That savors still of that happy retreat Where Eve by Adam was courted: Whilst the joyous Thrush, and the gentle Dove, Woo'd their mates in the boughs above, And the Serpent, as ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... join the other parts. The surface is then sprinkled with arar or genevriere powder and dressed with a small cloth bandage, the subsequent dressings consisting of arar powder and oil. During the operation the women in the gallery keep up an unearthly music by means of tumtums, cymbals, and all the kettles and saucepans of the neighborhood, which are brought into requisition for the occasion. This music is accompanied with songs and chants, each woman striking out with an independent ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... "for telling me about these people. Very probably I'll go in to Town some time during the day and call at Cockspur Street. I must apologize again for calling at such an unearthly hour. Good-bye," and ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... were cut short at that moment by a most horrible, unearthly-sounding yell; for the tightening of the rope about the unfortunate corporal, and the steady strain as he was lifted from where he had lain so long, had the effect of arousing his dormant energies. Not realising ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... powdered hair. These appeared to me exactly like ghosts, who, when I was alone in the room, seemed to come back to life, and filled me with the most abject fear. To sleep alone in this distant chamber, in that old-fashioned bed of state, beneath those unearthly pictures, was a constant terror to me. It is true I tried to hide my fear from my aunt when she lighted me to bed in the evening with her candle, but never a night passed in which I was not a prey to the most horrible ghostly visions, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... silver, cut glass, and wax candles, was absolutely framed in by the darkness around. Two or three horses picketed under the trees with their grooms, cowering over fires made upon the ground, looked very like unearthly chargers, just emerged with their grim attendants from some subterranean kingdom; while the red glare from the cooking tents, and the dusky figures moving about, could scarcely be recognised as belonging to human and every-day ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... Such an unearthly yell I had never heard. He was not so drunk that fire would not burn him, and the pain made him howl like a wounded buffalo. They rolled and struggled, and the firebrands were scattered in every direction. In a moment they sprang to their feet, but ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... of the river. Sometimes I thought I heard a roaring like that of the Sault, but it was only a ripple growing into fleecy waves that rocked me as in a cradle. The many sounds were above, below, and beside me, some weird and hollow and unearthly. I could hear rocks rolling over in their sleep on the bottom, and, when the water was still, a sound like the cropping of lily-pads away off on the river-margin. The bellowing of a cow terrified me as it boomed over the sounding ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... which was made apparent by the presence of the Gospel[509]." I am prone to suspect that the burning vehemence of their own language must many a time have moved the Prophets of old to deepest astonishment; and that when there broke from them words of more than mortal power,—or images of unearthly grandeur,—or the outlines of a grief more than human; when they spake of a betrayal for thirty pieces of silver[510], of blows and spitting[511], and of pierced hands and feet[512]; of parted garments and lots cast upon a vesture[513];—they must have felt, they must have felt the awfulness ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... grateful and laudatory to both of them—but she remained here, ten miles from nowhere. It was a beautiful place. Down a hill the wheat swam toward a village whose elevator was a glistening tower. Mud-hens gabbled in a slew, alfalfa shone with unearthly green, and bees went junketing toward a field of red clover. But she had the motorist's fever to go on. The road behind and in front was very long, very white—and ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... sometimes revolving the anxious cares which were always pressing upon his mind. One night he was thus alone in his tent, with a small lamp burning before him, sitting lost in thought, when he suddenly heard a movement as of some one entering the tent. He looked up, and saw a strange, unearthly, and monstrous shape, which appeared to have just entered the door and was coming toward him. The spirit gazed upon him as it advanced, but ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... greeting pass between them. Gladys mechanically sat down, then Walter walked away slowly out of the ward. With a low cry, Teen flung herself on her knees, laying her face on the white, wasted hand of Liz as it lay outside the coverlet. The figure in the bed, raised up in a half-sitting posture, had an unearthly beauty in the haggard face, a brilliance in the eye, which struck her chilly to the heart; it was like Liz, and yet strangely unlike. Gladys felt a strange thrill pass over her as she bent towards her, trying to smile, and to say a word of kindly greeting. It brought no answering ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... brambles stretched from tree to tree along the slopes. The slender cypresses, the tall pines with their straight trunks, formed a thick colonnade, a lattice through which the sunlight flitted, a false unearthly light, that striped the ground with bands of ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... beautiful deed,—fresh from the pure fount of maternal piety! The Hebrew mother consecrating her first-born child to the Temple-service,—dedicating him to the God who gave him! What visions of unearthly glory must have been before her, as she led her little boy before the altar of the "King of kings!" Happy mother! thou hast long since gone to thy great reward. And happy child! to be led by such a mother. Ye are now together in that temple "not made ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... shame, whose will was traitorous? What shall compensate an ideal dimmed? How blanch again my statue virgin-limbed, 180 Soiled with the incense-smoke her chosen priest Poured more profusely as within decreased The fire unearthly, fed with coals from far Within the soul's shrine? Could my fallen star Be set in heaven again by prayers and tears And quenchless sacrifice of all my years, How would the victim to the flamen leap, And life for life's redemption paid ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... there was a crash and an unearthly scream, then a thud that sounded as if it had happened in the middle of the earth. Father Donovan and I looked around in alarm, but Paddy was nowhere to be seen. Toward the wall there was a square black hole, and, rushing up to it, we knew at once what had happened. Paddy had danced ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... making friends with them, mosses, lichens, ivies—is a dead, cold material, and does not harmonise with surrounding circumstances. Like the snow, which hides the familiar brown soil from us, with its unearthly and uncongenial whiteness, its perpetual snow chills and repels human sympathies. Nature, for a similar reason, introduces white flowers very sparingly into the landscape; and their dazzling whiteness is toned down by the greenery around them, and the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... terrific. Except for the lurid glare of the burning buildings which lit up the streets, the city was in total darkness. For weeks martial law had been in effect and there were no lights after sundown. An unearthly feeling it was, to be locked in the darkness of this strange city, unable to speak a word of the language, not knowing whether the garrison had evacuated the forts or whether the city had been surrendered, believing there ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... black glass belt bound her narrow waist like clasped hands, and her robe, stark white, bore an ugly embroidery across the breasts, the flat sprawl of a conventionalized Toad God, Nebran. Her features were delicate, chiseled, pale; a Dry-town face, all human, all woman, but set in an alien and unearthly repose. The great eyes gleamed red. They were fixed, almost unseeing, but the crimson lips were ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... cold-looking and devoid of ornament. Upon the roof there is a square perforated belfry, containing one bell. It was put up a few years ago, and before it got into use there was considerable newspaper discussion as to the inconvenience it would cause in the morning, for having to be rung at the unearthly hour of six it was calculated that much balmy quietude would be missed through it. Some people can stand much sleep after six, and on their account early bell-ringing was dreaded. But the inhabitants have got used to the resonant metal, and those who ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... ensued such a babble of wonder and delight and excited speculation as to its contents that Lucile was finally obliged to shout, "If you will only sit down, girls. I'll see what's inside, and please stop making such an unearthly noise—we'll have the reserves out to quell the riot before ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... that he would write, And some love token send her; Her step grew feeble, her face grew white, And her eyes got unearthly splendour. ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... description, and more in the same style, I intended to throw a ghostly glimmer round the reader, so that his imagination might view the town through a medium that should take off its every-day aspect, and make it a proper theatre for so wild a scene as the final one. Amid this unearthly show, the wretched brother and sister were represented as setting forth, at midnight, through the gleaming streets, and directing their steps to a graveyard, where all the dead had been laid from the first corpse in that ancient ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... freakish playfulness and mischief as an elemental being, and her sweet patience when her soul is won, are quite original, and indeed we cannot help sharing, or at least understanding, Huldbrand's beginning to shrink from the unearthly creature to something of his own flesh and blood. He is altogether unworthy, and though in this tale there is far less of spiritual meaning than in Sintram, we cannot but see that Fouque's thought was that the grosser human ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... an active volcano, glanced at his watch, and discovered that it was exactly five A.M.! Intensely pacified by this knowledge, he lumbered toward the bunkhouse door and flung it open, determined to crush the pestersome youth who thus unfeelingly disturbed the quietude of Camp Bannister at such an unearthly hour! However, his grim purpose was temporarily thwarted—before him spread a beautiful panorama, a vast canvas painted in rich hues and colors, that indescribably charming masterpiece of nature, ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... and muriatic acid vapour that environed me before I could reach the upper edge. I sat down in a nook, though it was a very hot one, and made a sketch or two of the appearance of the crater. But I feel that it is quite beyond my power either by pen or pencil, to convey an idea of the weird unearthly aspect which the funnel-shaped crater of Vesuvius presented at that time. An eruption of unusual violence had occurred shortly before I saw it. Great rounded blocks of lava had been thrown high into the air again and again, and had fallen back into the terrible focus of volcanic violence. Vast ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... darkness, into the moonlight, came the troop of Phantom Cats. This time they were led by a fierce, black Tomcat. As they came nearer they chanted with unearthly screeches:— ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... lover's name, but would lay her head on her mother's bosom and weep in silence. Her poor parents hung in mute anxiety over this fading blossom of their hopes, still flattering themselves that it might again revive to freshness and that the bright unearthly bloom which sometimes flushed her cheek might be the promise of ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... silent city, a gloom unrelieved by any homely twinkle of light, these dreadful streets, these stricken homes took on an aspect more sinister and forbidding in the half-light. Behind those flapping curtains were pits of gloom full of unimagined terrors whence came unearthly sounds, stealthy rustlings, groans and sighs and sobbing voices. If ghosts did flit behind those crumbling walls, surely they were very sad and ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... a stillness on his spirit fell, Before th' unearthly train; For he knew Valhalla's daughters well, The chooser of ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... weeks, induced possibly by the fact that there were houses already built, while the proximity of troops gave protection against the Indians. On the evening of the first day out from Goliad we heard the most unearthly howling of wolves, directly in our front. The prairie grass was tall and we could not see the beasts, but the sound indicated that they were near. To my ear it appeared that there must have been enough of them to devour our party, horses and ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... unearthly screech, that made the horses' knees bend under them. When Keith whirled to see what it was, she was standing upon the rock, with her skirts held tightly around her, like the pictures of women when a mouse ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... is succeeded by a lower note, as if in the first the creature had well nigh exhausted itself: this double scream is repeated several times, and followed by other sounds, resembling, as they rise and fall, half smothered cries of pains and moans of anguish. Suddenly the unearthly shrieks are renewed in all their power. While screaming the birds rush from side to side, as if possessed with madness, the wings spread and vibrating, the long-beak wide open and raised vertically. This exhibition lasts three ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... expected comet at the moment when its faint stain of diffused light first shows itself; he analyzes the ray that comes from the sun's photosphere; he measures the rings of Saturn; he counts his asteroids to see that none are missing, as the shepherd counts the sheep in his flock. A strange unearthly being; lonely, dwelling far apart from the thoughts and cares of the planet on which he lives,—an enthusiast who gives his life to knowledge; a student of antiquity, to whom the records of the geologist ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... blue and rose. Spreading in a vast, irregular arc, it hung like a curtain, wavering to and fro and casting off luminous spears that stabbed the dark. For a time it blazed in transcendental splendor, then faded and receded, dying out with unearthly glimmering far back in ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... little, then somehow fallen silent. A wonderful warm, black, grape-bloom night, exquisitely gracious and inviting; the stars very high and white, the flowers glimmering in the garden-beds, and against the deep, dark blue, roses hanging, unearthly, stained with beauty. There was a scent of honeysuckle, he remembered, and many moths came fluttering by towards the tall narrow chink of light between the curtains. Alicia had sat leaning forward, elbows on knees, ears ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... at the corner of the two roads, his throbbing head bent to his knees. The clouds in the west glowed with a fierce purple, when he started up at last. He started up and walked, swiftly and with firm step, towards Walkherd Lodge. The clouds in the west seemed to glow with an unearthly light. ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... whirled in black clouds round the trees and the conical red caps of the oast-houses which give that country the look of being studded with turreted castles; then they descended—a black line—upon the fields, with what seemed an unearthly loudness of caw. And all round there arose a shrill quavering bleating of lambs and calling of sheep, while the wind began to catch the ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... symbol of the past; but there is enough to loiter in with perfect content, for Veere is unique. Certainly no little town is so good to approach—with the friendliness of its red roofs before one all the way, the unearthly hugeness of its church and the magic of its stadhuis tower against ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... trickling, and the sounds of animal life are left thousands of feet below. The most that you can hear is some mysterious noise made by the wind eddying round the gigantic rocks; sometimes a strange flapping sound, as if an unearthly flag were shaking its invisible folds in the air. The enormous tract of country over which your view extends—most of it dim and almost dissolved into air by distance—intensifies the strange ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... wheels, and the next moment a huge steamer dashes past you in the mist. You can hear her, but the fog hides her. Then the boat goes ahead again, and gradually the fog bells on the shore grow louder and clearer, and in a little while the dock bursts suddenly upon you, so spectral and unearthly in its appearance that you hardly recognize it. The boat now glides swiftly into her "slip," and a sigh of relief breaks from the throng on ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... encompassed by invisible power and protection. In vain she said to herself that the simple and unlooked-for method of her escape was one of those coincidences which only appear to support faith, that her deliverance had been of no unearthly sort, but brought about by means doubtfully righteous—consent to trick the boy and to say little on hearing the Mormons falsely accused. When she had told herself this, the impression that underneath ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... alternates a murder with a Trattato; he builds engines and railroads and ships. Michael Angelo smites no sibyls from the living stone, but he has carved the face of the very earth to his design. And though no fair youth steps forth to paint the unearthly nimbus-light around the brows of his beloved madonna, I count it fair exchange that from every reef and point of this our sea-girt isle there shines a radiance none can watch without a ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... which, shining through those large glass bottles in the window, filled with red and blue liquors—once supposed by this author, when young and innocent, to be medicines of the most potent description,—lit up the faces of the passers-by with an unearthly glare, and exaggerated the general redness and blueness of ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... was, that the little Puritans, being of the most intolerant brood that ever lived, had got a vague idea of something outlandish, unearthly, or at variance with ordinary fashions, in the mother and child, and therefore scorned them in their hearts, and not unfrequently reviled them with their tongues. Pearl felt the sentiment, and requited it with the bitterest hatred that can be supposed to rankle in a childish bosom. These ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... crowd of disembodied spirits wins for itself a certain cultus of praise and propitiation, and reverence, and is humoured with food-offerings and similar sacrifices. Nor is it long before the form of an earthly polity is transferred to that unearthly city of the dead, till for one reason or another some jealous ghost gains a monarchic supremacy over his brethren, and thus polytheism gives place to monotheism. It need not be that this supreme deity is always conceived as a defunct ancestor, ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... company—which was often, as solitude at Monte Carlo is more depressing than Zora had realized—she sent a page boy, in the true quality of his name of chasseur, to hunt down the quarry and bring him back. He would, therefore, be awakened at unearthly hours, at three o'clock in the afternoon, for instance, when, as he said, all rational beings should be asleep, it being their own unreason if they were not; or he would be tracked down at ten in the morning to some obscure little cafe ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... Angel sounding on the Last Day had rung through earth and sky. The room was full of people, and a horror-stricken crowd beheld the fainting Felipe upheld by the strong arm of his father, who clutched him by the throat. They saw another thing, an unearthly spectacle—Don Juan's face grown young and beautiful as Antinous, with its dark hair and brilliant eyes and red lips, a head that made horrible efforts, but could not move the ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac
... clock tower when the two left the gondola and entered the Place of St. Mark. The old church with its cupolas, the open Place, the pillars with St. Theodore and the dragon, the palace of the Doges with its open stone work, showed like a scene out of another world; so unearthly beautiful, so weird and so stately. There had been that day some festival or public occasion which had called the multitude together, and lingerers were still to be seen here and there, and the windows of cafes and trattorie were lighted, and ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... spectacle. A vanguard, with lighted torches, preceded it; it was surrounded by special attendants, and was followed by detachments of night-patrols on foot and mounted. The size and shape of this structure, which was escorted with such pomp and precaution—the silence that prevailed—the unearthly hour, all helped to give an air of mystery to the proceedings. At last, having passed through the principal thoroughfares, it arrived at the Champ de Mars, where it was placed in an enclosure prepared ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... he bellowed out in an unearthly tone which made the lantern jump and tremble! "I shall wake you! ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... girl rose to her feet as if by enchantment, and stood there, taller by the head than the ordinary Capri girls her companions, who were breathlessly watching her. So still she stood, that with her shut eyes and face of unearthly pallor she might have been taken for a statue; till, as I slightly quickened the tempo, a convulsive tremor passed through her rigid, exquisitely molded limbs, and then with measured gestures of inexpressible grace ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... nineteen. There are some whom, when the terrible god Phthisis wishes to destroy he first makes beautiful; and the boy is one of these. His face is wax, and an awful pulchritude is born of the menacing flame in his cheeks. His eyes reflect an unearthly vista engendered by the certainty of his doom. As it is forbidden man to guess accurately concerning his fate, it is inevitable that he shall tremble at the slightest lifting of ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... Let's get back, or they'll think we're doing this on purpose too." And again she ran like a ghost among the trees. Jon followed, with love in his heart, Spring in his heart, and over all the moonlit white unearthly blossom. They came out where they had ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... red grasslike vegetation, and about me stretched a grove of strange and beautiful trees, covered with huge and gorgeous blossoms and filled with brilliant, voiceless birds. I call them birds since they were winged, but mortal eye ne'er rested on such odd, unearthly shapes. ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and Anselm, grieved at their sloth, hastily climbed the mountain side to accuse them to their lord. As he reached the palace the king's voice called him to his feet and he poured forth his tale; then at the royal bidding bread of an unearthly whiteness was set before him, and he ate and was refreshed. The dream passed with the morning; but the sense of heaven's nearness to earth, the fervid loyalty to the service of his Lord, the tender restfulness and peace in the Divine presence ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... It shows youth in a certain inequality, in a slight overdose of ornament, and especially in a very inartistic conclusion. But nowhere even in Milton does the mastery of harmonies appear better than in the exquisite rhythmical arrangement of the piece, in the almost unearthly beauty of the exordium, and in the famous stanzas beginning "The oracles are dumb." It must be remembered that at this time English lyric was in a very rudimentary and ill-organised condition. The exquisite snatches in the dramatists had been snatches merely; Spenser and his ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... mother—there will be more pain for them here in consequence—but soon it will all end forever; in a little while we shall be together again. So you know nearly all about poor little me,' she said, with another of her smiles, which were the sweetest, yet most unearthly things I ever saw. 'And now tell me about yourself. I'm not able to talk much more for the present. I'd like to know something about the friend who helped me through the last few steps of my journey. I can think about you in heaven, you know,' she said, with the sweetest little ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... forgotten the plumed dare-devil cavalier who once made a dash to steal the king's regalia from the Tower. Again—Loon Lake. Can you imagine two more lonesome wailing words to make a picture with? But—Cohocton. How oddly right my absurd instinct had been about that—and, shall we ever forget the unearthly beauty of the evening which brought us at dark to the quaint little operatic-looking village, deep and snug among the solemn, ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne |
