"Waning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the letter shakes, Even the rosy wafer dries Upon her tongue which fever bakes. Her head upon her breast declines And an enchanting shoulder shines From her half-open vest of night. But lo! already the moon's light Is waning. Yonder valley deep Looms gray behind the mist and morn Silvers the brook; the shepherd's horn Arouses rustics from their sleep. 'Tis day, the family downstairs, But nought ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... front. Few human beings ever came near this place, except now and then some wandering gypsies, the sight of whom was not unpleasing to the poet. Inside this old oak Clare used to sit in silent meditation, for many hours together, forgetting everything about him, and unmindful even of the waning day and the mantle of darkness falling over the earth. Having prepared his verses in rough outline, within the oak, or in some other lonely place, he would hurry home without delay. Patty, carefullest of housewives, although little ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... is widely dilated. If, as is common, one eye only has suffered, the contrast in these respects with the sound eye is all the more characteristic. Another feature is the erect, attentive carriage of the ear, to compensate to some extent for the waning vision. ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... themselves soon nearly up to their necks in the waves, while so narrow was the submerged bank along which they were marching, that a misstep to the right or left was fatal. Luckless individuals repeatedly sank to rise no more. Meantime, as the sickly light, of the waning moon came forth at intervals through the stormy clouds the soldiers could plainly perceive the files of Zealand vessels through which they were to march, and which were anchored as close to the flat as the water would allow. Some had recklessly ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of the seventeenth century signs may be detected of some waning in the universal popularity of tobacco. There are hints of change in the records of City and other companies. Tobacco had always figured prominently in the provision for trade feasts. In 1651 the Chester ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... superstitious fancies. When his wife returned, she found him with a fatal pallor on his face, silent and melancholy, laboring with intense absorption on the funereal mass. He would sit brooding over the score till he swooned away in his chair, and only come to consciousness to bend his waning energies again to their ghastly work. The mysterious visitor, whom Mozart believed to be the precursor of his death, we now know to have been Count Walseck, who had recently lost his wife, and wished ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... vale to dwell, Whose boundary knows the early summer's spell, And where, in leafy tabernacle, June Hears not the mandate of the waning moon. The river bank and hill-side of the vale, And orchard fruitage streaked with morning pale, Grow rosy with the rosy summer hours. Green is the dewy turf and gay with flowers. The morning sky is azure; we behold The white clouds sleeping ...
— Across the Sea and Other Poems. • Thomas S. Chard
... defiance of Nature's laws, yet with or without miracles, they have never answered the simple arguments advanced by Jean Meslier; although they claim to hold the keys of Paradise, and bind on earth the souls that are to be bound in heaven, yet year by year their waning power refutes their senseless boast; although they boldly assert the dogma of popish infallibility, yet the loss of the temporal power once wielded by Rome, and the death of each succeeding pontiff, attest both the Pope's fallibility and the Pope's mortality. Indeed, ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... were white specks in the distance. The idlers on the beach were thinned in number; the sun was low in the heaven; the blue sea was darker, and rippled by a breeze. Changes on sky and earth and ocean told of the waning day; change was everywhere—except close at her side. There Magdalen sat, in the same position, with weary eyes that still looked over the sea, and ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... The blushing rose once more sought the thorny stem that had slept so long desolate; and the changeful-hued touch-me-not looked up smilingly from the pallid grass, where nestled thousands of purple violets peeping out timidly from their shady nooks; and the waning year smiled—smiled as smiles the dying man, when the life-blood quickens in his veins, for almost the last time to linger on the cheek and lip, brighten in the eye, and give a joyous swell to the heart that lies in ruins. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... too true that I could not call her "Little Miss," as I had lightly called her mother "Miss Caroline" at our first encounter. Of a dusky pallor was Miss Lansdale when I first beheld her under the night of her hair. As the waning light showed me her, I thought of a blossomed young sloe tree in her own far valley of the Old Dominion. Closer to her I could note only that she was dark but fair, for observations of this character became, for some reason, impracticable in her ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... constancy to his original inclination were blotted out as if by magic. His primeval affection was uprooted, turned over, and then jolted unceremoniously out of existence. One divided glimpse had restored vigour to his waning passion and it flamed with all the fury of coals that have smouldered long and lazily. The one distressing condition attached to this pleasant and refreshing restoration was the fact that he succumbed not to ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... night now waning fast On Sona's pleasant shore they passed. Then, when the dawn began to break, To Rama thus the hermit spake: "The light of dawn is breaking clear, The hour of morning rites is near. Rise, Rama, rise, dear son, I pray, And make ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... were cheaply constructed and ugly, and in all directions there was a vast disorder; but Hugh did not see the disorder or the ugliness of the buildings. The sight that lay before him strengthened his waning vanity. Something of the loose shuffle went out of his stride and he threw back his shoulders. "What I have done here amounts to something. I'm all right," he thought, and had almost reached the old corn-cutter plant when several men came out of a side door ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... in the town hall had shown waning interest in this discussion. There seemed to be matters outside that distracted the attention of those near ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... the moon, for caught between the horns of a dilemma she had no wealth left to endow the infant with. Intemperate habits had the goddess always, was often full and now reduced to her last quarter, but that was waning fast and her man's shadow also growing less. Her semi-transparent stone, alas! had given she long since to California, but this proudest of all daughters of the seas did not appreciate the kindly gift. She cast it on the white sands of her beaches ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... only with a wooden point, the largest diameter of which fitted pretty accurately to the bore of the heavy piece. La Salle, meanwhile, had drawn his shot, and motioning to Peter to load a barrel of his own gun in like manner, turned to watch the waning conflict, which, notwithstanding the exhaustion of the combatants, had evidently produced little more damage than a few ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... stone as having been set in the forehead of the four-handed Indian god who typifies the Moon. Partly from its peculiar colour, partly from a superstition which represented it as feeling the influence of the deity whom it adorned, and growing and lessening in lustre with the waxing and waning of the moon, it first gained the name by which it continues to be known in India to this day—the name of THE MOONSTONE. A similar superstition was once prevalent, as I have heard, in ancient Greece and Rome; not applying, however (as in India), to a diamond devoted to the service of a god, ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... who had been so lately sworn into his Privy Council; and the alarm and indignation of all who resented the Scotch influence was very great. The Duke of Newcastle in especial was irritated by the use of the word "Briton," and the evidence it forced upon him of his own waning influence and the waxing power of Bute. He even went so far as to wish that some notice should be taken of the "royal words" both in the motion and the address; but in the end he and those who thought with him felt ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... of Lockton Moor. At last the friendly little oil-lamps on the platform at Levisham Station appear just below, and soon the railway is crossed and we are mounting the steep road on the opposite side of the valley. What is left of the waning light shows the rough track over the heather to High Horcum. The huge shoulders of the moors are now majestically indistinct, and towards the west the browns, purples, and greens are all merged in one unfathomable blackness. The tremendous silence and the desolation become almost oppressive, ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... amid tangled foliage, where the orange chalices of the flowering Amherstia glisten from sombre branches, and hang like fairy goblets from the interwoven roofs of tropical tunnels, pierced by broad red roads. On this Sunday afternoon of the waning year which introduces us to Weltevreden, family groups are gathered round tea tables canopied with flowers and palms, in the white porticos of the Dutch villas, and the startling deshabille adopted by Holland in the Netherlands India almost ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... city of Lima, for centuries a very stronghold of image worship, the interest in the Church has of late years been waning. Perhaps one reason for this is the changing nature of the native population of the city, for the deaths there exceed the births. Seeing this falling away from the Church, the priests announced that they had decided to send for the Sacred Heart of the Virgin, and trusted that the ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... sickle of the waning moon suspended over the gulf. It shot but the feeblest glimmer along the edges of the granite pinnacles, none upon the black masses of the pine-tops. But around it the darkness held a faint violet glow, and I knew that day must be climbing ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... death, the silent, spotless snow gleamed in the light of the waning moon. Not a breath of wind sighed amongst the stately black trees. Only, far below, the tumbling torrent roared through its half-frozen bed, and high above, from the summit of the battlement that had sheltered so many generations of Greifensteins from ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... out at the window, was unceremoniously pushed through by his comrades. He fell across the gunwale of the boat and was shoved overboard by Duff, while Ralph, seizing an oar, placed an end against the schooner's stern-post and threw all his waning strength upon it, sending the yawl out from under the shelter of ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... overcometh', and the beauty of the lips that made it—the encouragement to 'patient continuance in well-doing', 'till the day break and the shadows flee away.'—And there on the other hand was the substituted light of earth's wisdom and inventions, dominant yet, but waning and soon to be put out ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... over, and still Mr. Fairfax lingered—strangely indifferent to the waning of an afternoon which seemed peculiarly advantageous for fly-fishing, Mr. Granger thought. They went into the drawing-room, and Mr. Fairfax dawdled an hour away talking of Lyvedon, and giving a serio-comic description of himself in the novel character of a country ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... merrymakers could be dimly heard through the double windows, but Sebastian made no inquiry as to the meaning of the cry. A sort of lassitude—the result of confinement within doors, of insufficient food, of waning hope—had come over Desiree. She listened heedlessly to the sounds in the streets through which the dead were passing to the Oliva Gate, while the living danced by in their hideous ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... Crystal Palace in Hyde Park was to be the inauguration of a new era. Battles bloody as Napoleon's are now the familiar tale of every day; and the arts which have made greatest progress are the arts of destruction. What next? We may strain our eyes into the future which lies beyond this waning century; but never was conjecture more at fault. It is blank darkness, which even the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... neglect, as he turned his attention to the rival, now rapidly gaining the ascendency. The unfortunate Louise was doomed to daily martyrdom. She could not be blind to the fact that the king's love was fast waning. Conscience tortured her, and she wept bitterly. Before her there was opened only the vista of weary ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... material point of view Art is most important. In a recent address Sir F. Leighton has observed that the study of Art "is every day becoming more important in relation to certain sides of the waning material prosperity of the country. For the industrial competition between this and other countries—a competition, keen and eager, which means to certain industries almost a race for life—runs, in ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... musty and damp, but penetratingly sweet and intoxicatingly heady, which hangs in the air when the ghost has swept through the unopened door, and the flickering flames of candle and fire start up once more after waning. ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... whole their continence was great; So that some disappointment there ensued To those who had felt the inconvenient state Of 'single blessedness,' and thought it good (Since it was not their fault, but only fate, To bear these crosses) for each waning prude To make a Roman sort of Sabine wedding, Without the expense and the suspense ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... The afternoon was waning and the night would soon be at hand. Already shadows were creeping over the gulches and canyons and the reflections were weird and in places fantastic. In the fading light the vivid colors of the sides of the canyons ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... dozing and dreaming the long summer night, Till the dawn flushed its pink through the waning moonlight; When—I wish you could hear it once!—faintly there fell All around me the silvery sound of ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... dissatisfied. He had been willing enough to hold his tongue, because by so doing his unexpected and damning appearance at the trial would be the more dramatic and impressive. But he was impatient to make that appearance, and chafed at the delay. Also, his prestige was waning. The village was losing interest in the mystery, and it no longer looked to him to drop hints as the holder of the secret. That did not prevent him from dropping them. He would bring up the subject of the murder in order to ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... less lost the confidence of the country, and since the President had decided to select a new war minister, they thought the occasion was opportune to change the whole seven Cabinet ministers. They therefore earnestly advised him to make a clean sweep, select seven new men, and so restore the waning confidence of the country. The President listened with patient courtesy, and when the Senators had concluded, he said, with a characteristic gleam of humor in his eye: "Gentlemen, your request for a change of the whole Cabinet because I ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... the lover, the pursuit, their meeting again in Julie's home in Paris, the flickering candle of her waning life, burning down to its socket, the touching interchange of letters, the gathering shadows of the end, all these have stirred the hearts of entire Christendom, appealing to all ages and conditions. Raphael is a lovers' rosary.—C. ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... Scratch Hill, in the waning light of day, Hannibal, in a state of high excitement, met him at the log shed, which served ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... plateau, Tex led the way toward a point where a few straggling pines showed gaunt and lean in the rapidly waning moonlight. ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... he was unjust to Halidome, forgetting how impossible it was for him to believe that a woman could not stand him. He reached his rooms, and, the more freely to enjoy the clear lamplight, the soft, gusty breeze, and waning turmoil of the streets, waited a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the Presidency, it must have been clear to his friends and enemies alike that his influence in the Republican party was waning. A revolution in sentiment did not then sweep over the State with anything like the swiftness and certainty of the present era of cheap newspapers and rapid transit. Yet, in spite of his genius, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... the cattle cool their feet, and where the rushes grow; past paddock-fences, farms, and rickyards.; past last year's stacks, cut, slice by slice, away, and showing, in the waning light, like ruined gables, odd and brown. Yoho, down the pebbly dip, and through the merry watersplash, and up at a canter to the level ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... was growing fainter. The ominous waning, which was death, was stealing away her breath. She folded her thumbs within her fingers—a sign that her last moments were approaching. It seemed as though the first uncertain words of an angel just created were blended ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Friends, had they none? nor beam'd a wish to share Love, friendship, and to breathe the common air. Lost, lost to all! like some lone desert flower, Felt they unseen Time's slow consuming power, And hail'd each parting day with fond delight, As the tired pilgrim greets the waning light? ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... grayer welcome. I had left my grandfather unimpaired, and it was well-nigh impossible to figure that harsh and domineering spirit in decay. Abram Pendarves belonged to the ancient hearty, savage race of British sea-captains, now fast waning to extinction. After a youth of wild and black adventure under the rule of just such salt-water despots as he himself became, he had spent some two score years practising the tyrannies and what one may call the brutal virtues he had learned on every sea and beneath ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... it with the heroes of romance, Arthur and his knights? whose fictitious adventures, the splendid dreams of Welsh and Breton minstrels, many of the scenes of which are the valleys and passes of Snowdon, are the origin of romance, before which what is classic has for more than half a century been waning, and is perhaps eventually destined to disappear. Yes, to romance Snowdon is indebted for its interest and consequently for its celebrity; but for romance Snowdon would assuredly not be what it at present is, one of the very celebrated ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... three feet from the ground, where its circumference is least, was twelve feet two and a half inches. In 1884, at the same point, it measures fourteen feet one inch; a gain so slight that the rings of annual growth must be difficult to trace—an evidence of waning vital force. The grand subdivisions of the trunk are all sadly crippled; unsightly bandages of zinc mask the progress of decay; the symptoms of approaching dissolution are painfully evident, especially in the winter season. In summer, the remaining vitality ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... message of love to the sick girl. In the close atmosphere of his counting-room George Douglas too again battled manfully with his olden love, listening each day to hear that she was dead. But not thus early was Rose to die, and with the waning summer days she came slowly back to life. More beautiful than ever, because more ethereal and fair, she walked the earth like one who, having struggled with a mighty sorrow, had won the victory at last; and Henry Warner, when ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... Ewan's horse, with the two men on his back, entered the water. A soldier kept back Frank from following. But in the waning light he could see the Duke getting his people into order across the river, when suddenly a splash and a cry warned him that Rob had prevailed on Ewan of Brigglands to give him ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... story was over. He was looking out thoughtfully into the waning light, and I knew that his mind was busy with those days of the beginning of the institution he so loves, and whose continued success means so much to him. In a little ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... now, that I actually peeped over her shoulder. With mingled surprise and dismay I found that the dim page over which she bent was that of an old account-book. Ancient household records, in rusty ink, held up to the glimpses of the waning moon, which shone through the parting in the curtains, their entries of shillings and pence!—Of pounds there was not one. No doubt pounds and farthings are much the same in the world of thought—the true spirit-world; but in the ghost-world this eagerness over shillings and pence ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... night is waning; Endless day is round thee poured; Enter thou the rest remaining For the ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... garden talk, My friend and I, in the prime of June. The long tree-shadows across the walk Hinted the waning afternoon; The bird-songs died in twitterings brief; The clover ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Alliance, we must consider the conditions of history at the time that alliance was formed. For years a desperate war had been waged between the most powerful of nations and the weakest of peoples, struggling to become a nation. The American coffers had been drained, the spirit of the people was waning, hope was fading, and patriot hearts who had never despaired before were now bowed in the dust. The trials of the Continental army had never been matched since the trade of war began. Their sufferings had never been equalled since the days of the early Christian martyrs. While courage still ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... Third Avenue order and went on soliciting other business. The season was waning, but I obtained a number of small orders and laid foundations for future sales. Our capital was growing apace, but ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... and I hope you will not be totally discontent, though I am not satisfied with myself. I have executed it by snatches and by long interruptions; and not having been eager about it, I find I wanted that ardour to inspire me; another proof of what I told you, that my small talent is waning, and wants provocatives. It shall be a warning to ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... floating velvet blossoms."Farewell, Kentucky! farewell!" he said, looking about him at it all. Two hours passed. The shadows were lengthening rapidly. Over the forest, like the sigh of a spirit, swept from out the west the first intimation of waning light, of the mysteries of coming darkness. At last there reached his ear from far down the woodland path the sounds of voices and laughter—again and again—louder and louder—and then through the ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... Chauncey, on the other hand, the affair in its consequences and demonstration of actualities was a rude awakening, to which his correspondence during the succeeding six weeks bears witness by an evident waning of confidence, not before to be noted. On June 4 he tells the Secretary of the Navy that he has on Ontario, exclusive of the new ship not yet ready, fourteen vessels of every description, mounting sixty-two guns; whereas Yeo has seven, which, with six gunboats, carry ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... lying among their hills like German toys caught in the hollow of a guarding hand; masses of forests stretching wide, somber and silent and dark as a tomb; the shine of water's silvery line where it flowed in a rocky channel—they passed them all in the soft gray of the waning night, in the white veil of the fragrant mists, in the stillness of sleep and of peace. Passed them, racing for more than life, flying with ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... to the proper course to pursue, which was to wait patiently until the whole herd should have left the jungle and concentrated in the high grass; but the waning daylight did not permit of such a steady method of proceeding. I then proposed that we should choose our elephants, which were scattered in the high grass, and advance separately to the attack. Palliser voted that ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... English cousins. London was their metropolis, and to London, in the fashions of their remote province, they would return with amusing tales of Irish savagery that made them good company in an eighteenth century coffee-house. Little by little they found their English interests waning, and the social centre shifting westwards. Dublin became their city, and to a stately house in Merrion Square the family coach migrated in the season, until, at last, it seemed hardly worth while to cross the dreariness of the central plain, and a town-house in Galway ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... yield both bitter and sweet?" demanded Claude: "or are you as changeful as is yon waning moon?" he asked ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... horror. He saw himself as he had walked scowling toward the front of the store; he had paused irresolutely with his hand on the door-knob and then had turned back. The old merchant was standing close by the scales, a tall gaunt figure in the waning ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... doubt; but before we too severely censure these women, let us remember how deeply they were wronged, how great their temptations, how much they had at stake. In order to retain any thing like a comfortable or respectable position in their husband's houses, the waning beauties resorted to flattery and to the invention and skillful use of various articles which would conceal the declension of beauty or artfully counterfeit it. The ways and means by which attractiveness ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... in such soft grey hair. She looked so fragile that one fancied she might be wafted away by a summer breeze, and I have never seen anyone so pale. There was not a tinge of colour in face or hands, and one kissed her gently for fear that even a caress might be too much for her waning strength. ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... it scarce dry. He was going on to say that he had the race for the crossing as good as won and had just waved mockingly at the engineer of the defeated train who was pretending to feel indifferent about it—but I hung up on him. My strength was waning. Was he here this minute I make no doubt I'd go to the mat with him, unequal as we are in prowess.' He dribbled off into vicious mutterings of what he'd say to the boy if he was ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... level expanse of the Calle Rivera clattered an unending stream of horsemen, their accoutrements jingling a sinister diapason as they poured helter-skelter across the plaza in the waning moonlight. Tatterdemalion as they were, the ragged army were well-organized as Thode saw at a glance; no haphazard, leaderless crew was this, for at their head rode a diminutive, jockey-like figure, his ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... of the moon, whose waning light witnessed their solemn obsequies, the aim of Wallace's life, the object of Helen's prayers, was accomplished. Peace reigned in Scotland. The discomfited King Edward died of chagrin in Carlisle; and his humbled ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... dense with scrub oak and fir. At every turn Baskerville gave an exclamation of delight, looking eagerly about him and asking countless questions. To his eyes all seemed beautiful, but to me a tinge of melancholy lay upon the country-side, which bore so clearly the mark of the waning year. Yellow leaves carpeted the lanes and fluttered down upon us as we passed. The rattle of our wheels died away as we drove through drifts of rotting vegetation—sad gifts, as it seemed to me, for Nature to throw before the carriage of ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... linguis! The hour helps us, for the spring-tides at this season reach their height a little after night-fall, and it is on an already slackening flood that we cast off our moorings and head up the river with our backs to the waning sunset. Since we tow a dinghy astern and are ourselves towed by the silent yachtsman, you may call it a procession. She has been stripped, during the last two days, of sails, rigging, and all spars but the mainmast. Now ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... slow and steady progress, as all our peasants do, making their walking a part of the easy but continual labour of their lives. But I sat on, watching the light creep around towards the north and change, and the waning moon coming up as though by stealth behind the woods of No ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... Lynhurst Park off to our left, curving with the turnings of Brushy Creek Valley, through which our engineers had found such easy grades, dropping the straggling suburbs of the city behind us, we flew along the rails in the waning twilight of this grewsome day. On the windward windows and the roof rattled fierce flights of sleet and showers of cinders from the engine. Occasionally we felt the car sway in the howling gusts of wind, as we passed some opening in the hills and ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... warm and windless, with a waning moon in the east, and as yet no tremble of the dawn below it. Around the foot of the dovecote the turf lay in blackest shadow; but a moon-ray overtopping the low ridge of Mr Garraway's back premises (Mr Pinsent's next-door neighbour on the left), illuminated ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... state of being in love is waning, affection often remains, but then one is at the mercy of a new emotion. I'd be nervous if a woman who had loved ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... the alterations of mood in the girl's heart, the pauses that marked a moment of meditation as she watched some green curving bank, or a plunge of the mad little creek that sent a glory of spray whitely into the sunlight. It grew late and the shadows of waning afternoon crept through the park. The crowd had hurried home to escape the chill of the spring dusk, but she lingered on, reluctant to leave, and presently left her horse with the groom that she might walk alone beside the creek in a place that was beautifully wild. About her lay a narrow ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... November, and half-faded, as it were, in the waning light, are most meet offerings for the departing year to lay at ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... two seasons (the wet and the dry) and twelve months named from meteorological phenomena, and each day in the month receives a name from the attendant phase of the moon. The great ceremonies are conducted in the period of the waxing of the moon, and its waning is an occasion of mourning. The new moon is greeted with a prayer that it may bring blessing. A similar custom exists among the Masai.[396] On the other hand the Todas, though the times of their festivals ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... Toady craned his neck around a boulder, surveyed the quiet mountainside in the waning afternoon light, ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... by it, lest thy heart faileth and thou diest. Having passed this temple, take the winding road at its rear. This will bring thee to where three roads meet, and there thou wilt see, by the light of the waning moon and the flickering stars, an altar, and, rising above it, the three-figured statue of the Triple Goddess. She, as Hecate, holding in her hands the keys of hell and of death, facing the pit in which ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... him in spite of all, only to discover, that just as I left Babhru in the lurch, so I myself shall be abandoned, it may be, for some other woman's sake? And at the thought, she shuddered, and grew cold all over, and turned suddenly paler than a waning moon. ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... their mild radiance on the fading flowers beneath, she pursued her way through a cloud of fragrance. It was the last breath of the expiring year. Love is full of imagination. Mary easily glided from the earth's departing charms to her own she thought waning beauty; the chord once touched, every note vibrated, and hope and fear, joy and regret, again ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... purgatory: Thy lips are loud with strains of oldworld story, But the red prey was rent out of thy paws Long since: and they that dying brake down thy laws Have with the fires of death-enkindled glory Put out the flame that faltered on thy hoary High altars, waning with the world's applause. This Italy was Dante's: Bruno died Here: Campanella, too sublime for pride, Endured thy God's worst here, and hence went home. And what art thou, that time's full tide should shrink For thy sake downward? What art thou, to think Thy God shall give thee ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... at length was past, and the burning heat was over and gone. The days were refreshed with the balm of a waning October. There had been no fever. True, the nights were still aglare with torches, and the street echoes kept awake by trumpet notes and huzzas, by the tramp of feet and the delicate hint of the bell-ringing; and men on the stump and off it; in the "wigwams;" along the sidewalks, ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... political status by such an offer to their chief was a considerable event. For his part, he had for some time been painfully aware that the influence of the House of Commons in the constitutional scheme was fast waning, and that the plan of Sir William Temple for the reorganisation of the privy council, and depositing in it the real authority of the State, was that to which we should be obliged to have recourse. This offer to him of a seat in the council was, perhaps, the beginning of the end. It was a crisis; ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... that night the moon had not yet risen. Its glow was on the eastern sky, however, and at length it appeared, a broken orb with its waning side lopped from ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... with every promise of a fine dry day. The waning moon was yet above the western horizon, for as it still wants three days to her last quarter she does not set until 10:57 A. M. On consulting my al- manac, I find that there will be a new moon on the 24th, and that on that day, ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... forest of paper-trees spread knotty, alien branches, trying to catch the rays of the winter-waning sun. Whenever Wang thought of his grandfather's remarks about his ancestors, he always wondered, as a corollary, what those same ancestors would have thought about a forest growing up here, where no forest like this one had ever ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... he had set out on his return to Africa. It will be thus seen that, on the continent of Asia, Egypt possessed a nucleus of territories, so far securely under her rule that they might be actually reckoned as provinces; beyond this immediate domain there was a zone of waning influence, whose area varied with each reign, and even under one king depended largely on the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... broach the barrel, fill the bowl, And let us pledge the hearty soul, Though swift the waning minutes roll, And time will ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... waning now, and Silence tries To mourn, but meets no sympathy in sounds, As stooping low she bends, Forming with ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... that Mars possessed white regions at his poles, just as our Earth does. The waning of these polar snows—if indeed they are such—with the advance of the Martian summer, had often been observed. Lowell plots day by day this waning. It is evident from his observations that the snowfall must be light indeed. We see in his map the south pole turned towards us. Mars in perihelion ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... not the words "Made in Germany" so painfully familiar throughout two thirds of the globe, especially in Great Britain and her possessions, that they strike terror to Britons who study with apprehension the statistics of England's waning trade? This is true, also. And Suez Canal returns prove that the users of the waterway under Britain's red flag are yearly less numerous, while the number of German ships is ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... The afternoon was waning. The buyers might return at any moment, as Forrest's herd had no doubt crossed the river but a ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... marvelled what it might be; and so much, that they beheld how one of the heads of the said tun was newly arrayed. Wherefore they unheaded it, and found the Lady therein, in such case as though her hour were waning, for air failed her. Her body was big, her visage all swollen, and her eyes ugly and troubled. But when she saw the air, and felt the wind, she sighed a little, and the merchants stood about her and called unto her, ...
— Old French Romances • William Morris
... have left them far behind him; and never more would his eyes behold them, or his feet tread the path he had so often trod. They seemed to cry to him like living, sentient things. To and fro he wandered, while the silent stars and the waning moon, lying low in the sky above the church, looked down upon him with a pale and mournful light. At last the morning came; and he remembered that to-day he must quit them all, and sail for a ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... of duty waning? The alarmists say it is and point to the increase of divorce, falling off in church attendance, and the unrest among the laboring classes as evidence that there is a decadence. Pleasure is sought, excitement is the goal, and sober, solid duty is "forgotten." They point out a resemblance ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... only look and wonder. Still pluckily firing, she floated by upon the tide, which had now just turned; and when, with a last desperate effort, we got off, our engine had one of its impracticable fits, and we could only follow her. The day was waning, and all its range of possibility had lain within the ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... of her tree enjoyed this animated and grandiose spectacle, and often her heedless hand forgot to spin the thread. The day was waning, and already the sun, which had risen behind Thebes, had crossed the Nile and was sinking towards the Libyan chain, behind which its disc sets every evening. It was the hour when the cattle returned from the fields to the ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... after the commonest village pattern—a long cottage with two windows on either side of the front door—stood closely backed up against a wood of pines and larches. The wind was cold, and the sound of it in the evergreens was like a far-off halloo of winter. The house had a shadowy effect in waning moonlight, the walls were mostly gray, being only streaked high on the sheltered sides ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... He was waning. His window and door and the little fan-light before the door were all I could see now, and even that pattern blurred and became uncertain and ghostly on the mat of the night. He was clear of the wharves now, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... beam of Sir Oskatell's favour, like an April day, suddenly change its gaudy and suspicious brightness. Sir Thomas, waning in years and ready to depart, began to consider his former misdoings. His daughter and her offspring were, by the laws of nature, justly entitled to his possessions, which he, reflecting on the great impiety ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... slowly, sometimes with difficulty, but the young medical student made no attempt to check them. He only sat with shrewd eyes upon the sick man's face and alert finger on his wrist, marking the waning strength while he listened. For he knew that ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... sign of waning glories. On three evenings of the week, it was the pleasure of the king that the whole court should assemble in the vast suite of apartments now known as the Halls of Abundance, of Venus, of Diana, of Mars, of Mercury, and of Apollo. The magnificence of their decorations, pictures of ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... parallel. Marguerite was the daughter of the famous Catherine de Medicis, and was given in marriage by her scheming mother to Henry of Navarre, whose ascendant Bourbon star threatened to eclipse (as afterwards it did) the waning house of Valois. Catherine had four sons, three of whom successively mounted the throne of France, but all were childless. Although the king of the petty state of Navarre was a Protestant, and Catherine was the most fanatical of Catholics, she ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... would fain speak more particularly of some of my friends, but waning strength forbids, and moreover, now that I think of it, another consideration would render any comparison of their characters rather confusing than instructive to a reader. This is the fact that, in common with the rest of the mind-readers, ...
— To Whom This May Come - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... square, and wheeled, And there in the moonlight stood revealed A well-known form that in State and field Had led our patriot sires; Whose face was turned to the sleeping camp, Afar through the river's fog and damp, That showed no flicker, nor waning lamp, ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... object of terror to all creatures. Moved by the winds blowing from its shores and heaving high, agitated and disturbed, it seems to dance everywhere with uplifted hands represented by its surges. Full of swelling billows caused by the waxing and waning of the moon the parent of Vasudeva's great conch called Panchajanya, the great mine of gems, its waters were formerly disturbed in consequence of the agitation caused within them by the Lord Govinda ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... same time, and the snow crept closer, lapping house and garden up. Now the house was the size of a little dog's kennel, and now of a Noah's Ark, but still you could see the smoke and the door-handle and the roses on the wall, every one complete. The glow-worm light was waning too, but it was still there. "Darling, loveliest, don't go!" Maimie cried, falling on her knees, for the little house was now the size of a reel of thread, but still quite complete. But as she stretched out her arms imploringly the snow crept up on all sides until it met itself, and where ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... storms then shook the ocean of my sleep, Blotting that Moon whose pale and waning lips Then shrank as in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... pale evening over purple and silver flowers threaded by fish painted the vermilion and green of parrakeets. Inshore the pallid cypresses seemed, as John Woolfolk watched them, to twist in febrile pain. With the waning of day the land took on its air of unhealthy mystery; the mingled, heavy scents floated out in a sickly tide; the ruined facade ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... forth a rounded orb, clad in full effulgence, and commits to it the regency when the sun retires. Lastly, a slender, waning crescent appears nightly, like an aged man, ready to descend into the night of ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... Mr. Bryan's defeat in 1900 was the incipient waning of anti-imperialism, the conviction growing, even among such as had doubted this long and seriously, that the Administration painfully faulty as were some of its measures in the new lands, was pursuing there absolutely the only honorable or benevolent course open to it under the wholly novel ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... than he did. And their faith in the game's importance, and in him and his high-sounding nonsense, he very often found amusing: and in their other chattels too he took his natural pleasure. Then, when he had played sufficiently, he held a consultation with divers waning appetites; and he married the handsome daughter of an estimable pawnbroker in a fair line of business. And he lived with his wife very much as two people customarily live together. So, all in all, I would not say his life ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... so pleasantly about the pleasures of a comfortable room as Cowper. And was he not right to do so? After all, every hearth is the altar of the family, whereon the sacred fire should be kept constantly burning, waxing and waning with the seasons, but never be permitted to die out altogether. Miss Sprotts, as before mentioned, was much in favour of a constant fire, because of the alleged dampness of the house, and Madame Midas did not by any means ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... morning. The melancholy waning sunshine of autumn rested on the half-strown grass and came mildly through the windows in slanting bands of brightness over the old furniture, and the glass panel that reflected the furniture; over the tapestried chairs with ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... element which threw light on our inner being. How often has the approach of evening been described! And how mysterious is its solemnizing power! Yet it was reserved for Wordsworth in his sonnet "Hail, Twilight, sovereign of one peaceful hour," to draw out a characteristic of that grey waning light which half explains to us its sombre and pervading charm. "Day's mutable distinctions" pass away; all in the landscape that suggests our own age or our own handiwork is gone; we look on the sight seen by our remote ancestors, ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... left him, made what he could of Julia's sudden passion for the banks of the Serpentine, forsaken and foggy now, inasmuch as the afternoon had come on grey and the light was waning. She usually hated the Park and hated a closed carriage. He had a gruesome vision of her, shrunken into a corner of her brougham and veiled as if in consequence of tears, revolving round the solitude of the Drive. She ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... she stirred her head in the slightest possible way, so that a single tress of silken hair slipped from its companions, and lay across her face. It was a faint sign that the trance was waning; the slight pressure disturbed her nerves, and her lips trembled once or twice, as if to relieve themselves of the soft annoyance. Hope watched her in a vague, distant way, took note of the minutest motion, yet as if some vast weight ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... in the year 1600. His eye fell by chance upon the surface of a polished pewter dish which reflected the bright sunlight, when suddenly he felt himself environed and penetrated by the Light of God, and admitted into the innermost ground and centre of the universe. His experience, instead of waning as he came back to normal consciousness, on the contrary deepened. He went to the public green in Goerlitz, near his house, and there it seemed to him that he could see into the very heart and secret of ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... slowly down toward the coast, because the marshal himself was lame. Returning from his purification, Kalelealuaka alighted just to the rear of the party, who had not noticed his absence, and becoming impatient at the tedious slowness of the journey,—for the day was waning, and the declining sun was already standing over a peak of the Waianae Mountains called Puukuua,—this marvellous fellow caught up the lame marshal in one hand and his two comrades in the other, and, ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... keen scrutiny on his part to arrive swiftly at the conclusion that this one was not quite in the picture. Her cheeks were not red with that redness which has a permanency of tone, neither waxing nor waning, abashed in daylight. Nor had her lips found their scarlet moisture from out the depths of certain little porcelain boxes. Decidedly she was out of place here, yet she evinced no embarrassment; she was cool, at ease. ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... coal again with a sigh. Possibly if Euphemia had been surrounded by the wealth she deserves this trouble would not have arisen. A silent servant, bearing the due dose of fresh fuel, would have come gliding from a mysterious Beneath, restored the waning animation of the grate, and vanished noiselessly again. But this was beyond the range of Euphemia's possibilities. And so we are face to face with this ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... country improved, and by and by the babies weathered the critical period and the next six lived and grew up. The birds, too, would no doubt persevere six times and twice six times, if the season were long enough, and finally rear their family, but the waning summer cuts them short, and but a few species have the heart and strength to make even the ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... I go out of the case," he said. "I shall be back in time for breakfast to-morrow," and without waiting to argue the point he dived out into the waning darkness of the night, leaving ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... figure seemed to gather substance, and I felt as if some unknown force were compelling my attention and chaining my every sense in a mute endeavor to establish some chord of connection between me and the dim spirit world which floats forever round us. Now waxing, now waning, the vision grew, till I fancied I caught a glint of armor. For an instant a wild imploring glance met my own, and a transparent finger pointed to the richly-carved paneling below the arras, but as I sprang from the bed the vision faded swiftly away, leaving ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... reflections in Milly's revery that night. The sense of family stringency was urging her to "make good" in some way. She was aware that she was slipping back in the social sands, might become commonplace and neglected, if she did not do something to revive the waning interest in herself. She realized, as she had not definitely realized before, that outside of the social game her life held little or nothing. To be sure, she helped Mrs. Gilbert with her missionary business and charities: she read to a few old men once a week, and she carried flowers ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... was at hand. Yet summer lingered, fading and fainting among her hills, deepening the purple of her valleys, spinning a shroud of haze from waning powers and sated raptures, dying with the calm content of having lived and lived well. And among the hills, on their favorite knoll, Martin and Ruth sat side by side, their heads bent over the same pages, he reading aloud from the love-sonnets of the woman who had ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... towards the end of the following month Captain Brisket and Mr. Duckett sat outside the Swan and Bottle Inn, Holemouth, a small port forty miles distant from Biddlecombe. The day was fine, with just a touch of crispness in the air to indicate the waning of the year, and, despite a position regarded by the gloomy Mr. Duckett as teeming with perils, the captain turned a bright and confident eye on the Fair Emily, ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... was an expression on the grey, sunken face which was eloquent even to her inexperience. Death was coming forward to meet him, coming very near; standing upon the very threshold! Strong, happy nineteen shuddered at the thought, and felt an overpowering pity for the waning life. ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the light dust, kicked up by their horses' hoofs, enveloped them in a choking cloud, so that at times they could not see the butte for which they were making. It was of no use halting again. To halt was certain death—and they struggled on with fast-waning strength, scarcely able to retain their seats or speak to one another. Thirst had almost deprived them of ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... toil an' straining— But truce with peevish, poor complaining! Is fortune's fickle Luna waning? E'en let her gang! Beneath what light she has remaining, Let's ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... control, and has even itself become a spending body. Professor A.L. Lowell, in the work above referred to, after speaking of the Treasury as the department which exhibits in the highest degree the merits of the British Government, points out that even ten years ago, "with the waning desire for economy and the growth of other interests, the Treasury has to some extent lost its predominant position; although it will no doubt maintain its control over the details of expenditure, one cannot feel certain that its head will regain the powerful ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... their plan, Zidoc had in his chamber a little enchanted bell which rang shrilly when danger threatened him. Hearing the bell ring late at night, Zidoc rose from his bed, and hurrying to the turret window, saw, by the light of the waning moon, the dog and the cat making their way to the castle through the wood. Rubbing his hands with glee, he determined to let the two animals walk headlong into his power, and then inflict ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... were a walk to Weydene, and another observation of the bedroom which Mrs. Heredith had occupied in the left wing. He decided to leave his investigation of the room until later so as to have the advantage of the waning daylight in his walk ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... friendship of the secret society which every social nature understands. But as students are now becoming more truly "men" as they enter college, because of the higher standard of requirement, it is probable that the glory of the secret society is already waning, and that the allegiance of the older universities to the open arenas of frank and manly intellectual contests, involving no expense, no dissipation, and no perilous temptation, is returning. At least there will now be an urgent question among many of the best men in college whether ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... rain. Henry Burns and John Ellison had noted the favourable signs of the weather all afternoon; how the heavy clouds were gathering; how the gusts whipped the dust into little whirlwinds and blew flaws upon the surface of the stream; how the waning daylight went dim earlier than usual; and they had voted it favourable for ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... us lightly, blowing (as nearly as I can guess) from N.N.E., yet allowed us a fair course, so that by hauling the sheet close I could point well to windward of the fiery reflection on the water and fetch the island on a single tack. It was here, as we ran out of the loom of the land, that the waning moon lifted her rim over the hills astern; and it was here, as we cleared the point, that her rays, traversing the misty sea between us and Elba, touched the grey-white canvas of a vessel jeeling along (as we say at the fishing in Cornwall) and holding herself to windward for a straight ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... of tears—and all this for a shadow!—a shadow which one stroke of the pen would repurchase. I pondered on the singular proposal, and on my hesitation to comply with it. My mind was confused—I had lost the power of judging or comprehending. The day was waning apace. I satisfied the cravings of hunger with a few wild fruits, and quenched my thirst at a neighbouring stream. Night came on; I threw myself down under a tree, and was awoke by the damp morning air from an uneasy sleep, in which ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al. |
