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Stark   Listen
adjective
Stark  adj.  (compar. starker; superl. starkest)  
1.
Stiff; rigid. "Whose senses all were straight benumbed and stark." "His heart gan wax as stark as marble stone." "Many a nobleman lies stark and stiff Under the hoofs of vaunting enemies." "The north is not so stark and cold."
2.
Complete; absolute; full; perfect; entire. (Obs.) "Consider the stark security The common wealth is in now."
3.
Strong; vigorous; powerful. "A stark, moss-trooping Scot." "Stark beer, boy, stout and strong beer."
4.
Severe; violent; fierce. (Obs.) "In starke stours" (i. e., in fierce combats).
5.
Mere; sheer; gross; entire; downright. "He pronounces the citation stark nonsense." "Rhetoric is very good or stark naught; there's no medium in rhetoric."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Stark" Quotes from Famous Books



... augment his good grace to thee, Door! which of old, men say, didst serve Balbus benignly, whilst the oldster held his home here; and which contrariwise, so 'tis said, didst serve with grudging service after the old man was stretched stark, thou doing service to the bride. Come, tell us why thou art reported to be changed and to have renounced thine ancient ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... Tobago rum which shall be sold for the most it will bring. These are at the service of the State. If we succeed in defending our firesides and homes I may be remunerated, if we do not the property will be of no value to me. Our old friend Stark, who so nobly sustained the honor of our State at Bunker Hill may be safely entrusted with the conduct of the enterprise, and we will check the progress of Burgoyne." That brave son of New Hampshire, General Stark, conceiving himself aggrieved by certain acts of ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... even in midsummer, standing like a grim figure menaced by the tortured limbs of the trees surrounding it, stark and alone. No other human habitation was in view from its site. The Latham who had built the twelve-room house had built on hope. He desired and expected to fill the great house with a breed of Lathams that would do honor to the ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper

... Judging from the stark horror which I experienced, myself, I doubted, now, if Burke could sustain the role allotted him. In beneath the slightly raised window came a hand, perceptible to me despite the darkness of the room. It seemed to project from the black silhouette outside the ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... what I say, and then I warrant he'll feel shakier still. (loudly, with melodramatic fierceness) Fists, be up and doing! 'Tis long since ye have made provision for my paunch. It seems an age since yesterday when ye stripped stark four men and ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius

... to say that!" expostulated Bainton gently. "'E runs as near the wind as he can, but 'e'd never be stark starin' mad enough to ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... (How d'ye do, Pat?) 'Slan, go raimh math agut!' (Pretty well, thank you,) says the bear. The people were surprised to hear how plainly he spoke—but the mayor ordered him directly to be ripped up; and after some opposition, and a good deal of difficulty, Pat stepped forth stark naked out of the bear's-skin wherein he had been fourteen or fifteen days most cleverly stitched. The women made off—the men stood astonished—and the mayor ordered his keepers to be put in goal unless they satisfied him; but that was presently done. The bear ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... John Stark, who was the head of the band of Rangers to be quartered in Quebec during the winter as part of the garrison, and he was greatly excited ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... memories. Everything took place on the poo'ch, including the free, quite the profuse, consumption of hot cakes and molasses, including even the domestic manufacture of sausages, testified to by a strange machine that was worked like a handorgan and by the casual halves, when not the wholes, of stark stiff hogs fresh from Kentucky stores. We must have been for a time constantly engaged with this delightful group, who never ceased to welcome us or to feed us, and yet of the presence of whose members under other roofs than their own, by a return of hospitality received, ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... tortured by a cruel internal malady which had been aggravated by intemperance. At a dinner which a wealthy Alderman gave to some of the leading members of the government, the Lord Treasurer and the Lord Chancellor were so drunk that they stripped themselves almost stark naked, and were with difficulty prevented from climbing up a signpost to drink His Majesty's health. The pious Treasurer escaped with nothing but the scandal of the debauch: but the Chancellor brought on a violent fit of his complaint. His life was for some time thought to be in serious danger. James ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... beneath derisive skies, The victims bare, bewildered heads arise: Tales of the passing of the spirit, graced With humour blinding as the doom it faced: Stark tales of ribaldry that broke aside To tears, by laughter swallowed ere they dried: Tales to which neither grace nor gain accrue, But only (Allah be exalted!) true, And only, as the Seraph showed that night, Delighting to the ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... on the shaking ground, And the heart beats loud with a knelling sound; Swift by the breasts that must bear the brunt, Gallops the Major along the front— "Halt!" And fetter'd they stand at the stark command, And ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various

... road that led directly to his father's house, he went through the gate that led into Deacon Stark's pasture, and followed the cart-path through the woods. It was a great deal farther that way. But he went through the woods so as to get clear of his playmates. One of the deacon's hired men saw the boy, leaning against the fence, just at the edge of the woods. Poor fellow! ...
— Mike Marble - His Crotchets and Oddities. • Uncle Frank

... a little distance from the house, was a mock-orange hedge, now bare, naked, leafless. As Hiram drew near he heard footsteps approaching and low voices. He drew back into the fence corner and there stood, half sheltered by the stark network of twigs. Two figures passed slowly along the gray of the roadway in the gloaming. One was his stepbrother, the other was Sally Martin. Levi's arm was around her, he was whispering into her ear, and her head rested ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle

... enough light to show him the dark flags and swords of the iris flowers along the terrace edge—his favourite flower that had the night's own colour on its curving crumpled petals. He turned round to the house. Big, unlighted, not a soul beside himself to live in all that part of it. Stark loneliness! He could not go on living here alone. And yet, so long as there was beauty, why should a man feel lonely? The answer—as to some idiot's riddle—was: Because he did. The greater the beauty, the greater the loneliness, for at the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... I've never known before what it was to be terrified. But when I saw today beginning to end, and to-night getting nearer and nearer ... I felt my finger-tips getting cold. And I knew it was fright ... stark fright. I'm not a fool, and I'm not hysterical ... but I've been sitting in my room looking at myself in the glass, trying to control myself, telling myself what are real things ... and what aren't. I don't know any longer. The ...
— Night Must Fall • Williams, Emlyn

... been a stark calm since the commencement of the middle watch. The sails still hung up ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston

... complexion) would defy the orderly genius of the superintendent of the Astor House. Their laziness, their filthiness, their inconceivable stupidity, and unconquerable good humor, are enough to drive one stark, staring mad. The sitting-room we occupy is spacious, and not ill-furnished, and especially airy, having four windows and a door, none of which can or will shut. We are fortunately rid of that familiar fiend of the North, the anthracite ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... over you! Don't you see Mrs. Ammidon! Oh—" her speech rose in a choked exclamation. Edward Dunsack had turned the key and was crossing the room with a dark twisted face, his eyes stark and demented. Taou Yuen, swung round toward the advancing figure, heard a long fluttering breath behind her. Perhaps Nettie Vollar had died of fright. The terror in her own brain dried up before an overwhelming realization—she had betrayed herself to ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... cocked revolver on each side of him; for, though he had lost much blood, there was yet spirit in him, and he wanted revenge for these death-wounds. The pickets were now all brought in hastily, and the detachment began its march, leaving, I remember, one stark form propped against the church wall, with staring eyeballs fixed, and soul wandered somewhither. This, from his clean looks, had been one of the fresh California recruits, who, indeed, had found ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... fighting frontiers people always exaggerate the strong qualities the masculine sex does possess, and always add a great many strong qualities that it does not possess. That is, briefly, all the reason in the Brontes on this special subject: the rest is stark unreason. It can be most clearly seen in that sister of Charlotte Bronte's who has achieved the real feat of remaining as a great woman rather than a great writer. There is really, in a narrow but intense way, a ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... as he strews the first handful of mould on the dead—it may be on friends as well as on foes. If the pastor can reach the brink of the pit, it is his to say the few words that mark the recognition of the fact that those lying stark and grim below him are not as the beasts that perish. The Germans have no set funeral service, and if they had, there would be no time for it here. "Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... in which "the soul, bursting afterwards forth into tears and complaints ... seemeth to clear and dilate itself"; going on to tell how the German Lord Raisciac looked on his dead son "till the vehemency of his sad sorrow, having suppressed and choked his vital spirits, felled him stark dead to the ground." ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson

... was grey dawn, and we were working up in shore, without dreaming of breaking the blockade, when it fell stark calm. Presently the Spanish squadron, anchored under Punto Canoa, perceived us, when a corvette, two schooners, a cutter, and eight gunboats, got under weigh, the latter of which soon swept close to us, ranging themselves on our bows and quarters; and although we showed ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... was pure magnanimity, the heels of Francois were mercury, as he tripped past the church of Saint Benoit-le-Betourne, stark snow and ink in the moonlight. Then with ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell

... rendered to God was to put back the devil into hell, whereto he had condemned him. The girl asked him how this might be done; and he, 'Thou shalt soon know that; do thou but as thou shalt see me do.' So saying, he proceeded to put off the few garments he had and abode stark naked, as likewise did the girl, whereupon he fell on his knees, as he would pray, and caused ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... well find the body of the English lad before trying to catch my horse, so I walked on. Suddenly, in the silver-white of a starry sky, I saw what had terrified the animal. Close to the shrubbery lay the stark form of a white man, knees drawn upwards and arms spread out like the bars of a cross. Was that the lad I had known? I rushed towards the corpse—but as quickly turned away. From downright lack of courage, I could not ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... The church of Saint Maria Novella. Pass The left stair, where at plague-time Machiavel[6] Saw One with set fair face as in a glass, Dressed out against the fear of death and hell, Rustling her silks in pauses of the mass, To keep the thought off how her husband fell, When she left home, stark dead across her feet,— The stair leads up to what the Orgagnas save Of Dante's daemons; you, in passing it, Ascend the right stair from the farther nave To muse in a small chapel scarcely lit By Cimabue's Virgin. Bright and brave, ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... which at times one's feet seem literally to stumble. Fanatics in sheepskins glowering from the guarded thresholds of the mosques, fierce tribesmen with inlaid arms in their belts and the fighters' tufts of wiry hair escaping from camel's-hair turbans, mad negroes standing stark naked in niches of the walls and pouring down Soudanese incantations upon the fascinated crowd, consumptive Jews with pathos and cunning in their large eyes and smiling lips, lusty slave-girls with earthen oil-jars resting against swaying hips, almond-eyed boys leading fat ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... in places, has an almost scriptural solemnity; in its very harshness and baldness there is something subtly meet and fitting. One cannot imagine such a history done in the strained phrases of Meredith or the fugal manner of Henry James. One cannot imagine that stark, stenographic dialogue adorned with the tinsel of pretty words. The thing, to reach the heights it touches, could have been done only in the way it has been done. As it stands, I would not take anything ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... troops with their battery were advantageously posted upon a rising ground, at a bend in the Wollamsac (a tributary of the Hoosac), on its north bank. The ground fell off to the north and west, a circumstance of which Stark skilfully took advantage. Peters' corps of Tories were entrenched on the other side of the stream, in lower ground, and nearly in front of the German Battery. The little river, that meanders through the scene of the action, is fordable in all places. Stark was encamped upon the same ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... himself, with a smile that ended in a yawn. The black windows had faded through every shade of indigo; they now framed their opposite neighbors, stark and livid in the dawn; and the gas seemed turned ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... and scurrying to carpet the dells and spot the pools in the brooks and color the trails. When the weather cleared and the sun rose bright again many of the aspen thickets were leafless and bare, and the willows showed stark against the gray sage hills, and the vines had lost their fire. Hills and valleys had sobered with subtle change that left them ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey

... asked the horse.—"Why, to fetch him the Bird Zhar."—"Why that's not a task, but a trifle," replied the horse. "Let us go to the steppes," it continued, "and let me go a-browsing; but do thou strip thyself stark-naked and lie down in the grass, and the Bird Zhar will straightway swoop down to feed. So long as she only claws about thy body, touch her not; but as soon as she begins to claw at thine eyes, ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous

... it. Sheila's eyes were stark and unbelieving. She stood there without motion, without a word, her mind groping in a ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse

... fortune (and mayhap fame) have passed him by, and all through his own fault; he may whine about imaginary wrongs during the day when he is maudlin, but the night fairly throttles him if he attempts to turn away from the stark truth, and he remains pinned face to face with his beautiful, dead self. Then, with a start, he remembers that he has no friends. When he crawls out in the morning to steady his hand he will be greeted with filthy public-house cordiality by ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... superstition, or, if you like to put it in other language, against the dumb demands of man's infra-rational nature. The glory of the Stoics is to have built up a religion of extraordinary nobleness; the glory of the Epicureans is to have upheld an ideal of sanity and humanity stark upright amid a reeling world, and, like the old Spartans, never to have yielded one inch of ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... if she were afraid lest he should see too much, as if somehow his seeing it would sharpen the perilous edge she stood on, would wind up to the pitch of agony her tense feeling of it all, Winny suddenly became evasive. She found her subterfuge in stark matter of fact. ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... person who gets gooseflesh, And the way the person who stuffs himself Starts to burp, Like a mother in labor: The great yawn might perhaps be a sign, A nod from fate, To lie down to rest. And the thought would not leave him. And then he began to undress... When he was stark naked, he ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein

... gait, make exquisite gestures of abjection to the clumsy white Sahibs huddled uncomfortably on the back seat. Their robes of vivid colour, always harmoniously blent, leave bare the slender brown legs and often the breast and back. Children stark naked ride on their mothers' hips or their fathers' shoulder. Now and again the oxen are unyoked at a dribble of water, and a party rests and eats in the shade. Otherwise it is one long march with bare feet over the ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... this is life? Nay, I would rather see The man who sells his soul in some wild cause: The fool who spurns, for momentary bliss, All that he was and all he thought to be: The rebel stark against his country's laws: God's own mad ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... days the B. B.'s studied severely; United States histories were in great demand, and the pages of Shakespeare were turned over for inspiration. Each boy was to compile his own speeches, and many hurried consultations were held over back fences, and in haylofts; one boy, who represented General Stark, selected Hamlet's 'to be or not to be.' A companion objected to the lines as inappropriate, but General Stark replied, "Well, I know the piece because I've spoken it in school, and I ain't going to learn ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March

... Cossack, displaying the letter he had brought from the Count's rooms. "Nothing more. Your wife has succeeded very well. He is quite mad now. I found him last night, helpless, in a sort of fit, stiff and stark on the floor of his room. And this was in his pocket. Read it, Herr Fischelowitz. Read it, by all means. I suppose your wife does not mind your reading ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford

... dead and dying are but a tithe of the actual sufferers. There are desolate homes, far away, where want changes sorrow into madness. Wives wail by hearthstones where the household fires have died into cold ashes forever more. Like Rachel, mothers weep for the proud boys that lie stark beneath the pitiless stars. Under a thousand roofs—cottage roofs and palace roofs—little children ask for 'father.' The pattering feet shall never run to meet, upon the threshold, his feet, who lies stiffening in the bloody ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... kneading-trough to watch what she would do. She immediately became aware of his presence as he peeped through a chink, and called to one of her children to go and stop that chink. The child went and blew into it, and the boy became stark-blind. Thus he continued for a year, nor could any doctor help him, until an old experienced man advised him to go to the same place on the following Twelfth-tide, and falling down on his knees behind the kneading-trough, to bewail his curiosity. ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... the big cabin, with my two partners looking ruefully after me, I struck off down Bonanza. It was mid-October. A bitter wind chilled me to the marrow. Once more the land lay stark beneath its coverlet of snow, and the sky was wan and ominous. I travelled fast, for a painful anxiety gripped me, so that I scarce took notice of the improved trail, of the increased activity, of the heaps of tailings built up with ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... set in. First came short, sharp dashes, then a gleam of treacherous sunshine, followed by more and heavier dashes. The wind was in the southwest, and to rain seemed the easiest thing in the world. From fitful dashes to a steady pour the transition was natural. We stood huddled together, stark and grim, under our cover, like hens under a cart. The fire fought bravely for a time, and retaliated with sparks and spiteful tongues of flame; but gradually its spirit was broken, only a heavy body of coal and ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs

... see his muscles throb and jump, and he twisted about. There were just two flaring yellow candles, and all the shadows were shivering, and the little doctor nervous and putting on side, and him—stark and squirming in the most unnatural ways. Well, it made ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells

... man of God was lamenting the deplorable state of the church of Vervignole in the cloister of the cathedral, his meditations were disturbed by strange shrieks, and he saw a woman, stark naked, walking on all fours, with a peacock's feather for a tail. As she came nearer, she barked, sniffed, and licked the ground. Her fair head was covered with mud, and her whole body was a mass of filth. In this ...
— The Miracle Of The Great St. Nicolas - 1920 • Anatole France

... stay, for I have things above Require my study. Bri. No, thou shalt not stay, Thou shalt have a brave dinner too. And. Now has he Orethrowne himselfe for ever; I will down Into the Celler, and be stark drunk for anger. Exeunt. ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... neared and reached the horizon. There was no change in the star-studded sky. There were no sunset colorings. The incandescent brightness on the mountains was not lessened in the least. Only the direction of the stark black ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... that he had not only been delirious, but stark staring mad, and expressed a very earnest hope that, now he had got his senses hauled taut again, he'd belay them an' make all fast for, if he didn't, it was his, Disco's opinion, that another breeze o' the same kind would blow 'em ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne

... which kept continually falling buried him, so that his body, quite stiff and stark, disappeared under the incessant accumulation of their rapidly thickening mass; and nothing any longer indicated the place ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant

... of a half articulate appeal, he crushed her against his face. Whatever that had filled her with hope, she thought, was being torn from her. A sickening aversion over which she had no control made her stark in his arms. The memories of the painted coarse satiety of women and the sly hard men for which they schemed, the loose discussions of calculated advances and sordid surrenders, flooded her with a loathing for what she passionately ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer

... Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark Drowned. O pity and indig | nation! Manshape, that shone Sheer off, disseveral, a star, | death blots black out; nor mark Is any of him at all so stark But vastness blurs and time | beats level. Enough! the Resur- rection, A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, | joyless days, dejection. Across my foundering deck shone A beacon, an eternal beam. | Flesh fade, and mortal trash Fall to the residuary ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins

... till, what between excitement and hope, that maketh the heart sick, I grew so weary that I was actually contemplating a descent from the tree and a moonlight stalk. Such an act in ground so open would have been that of a stark staring lunatic, and that I should even have been contemplating it will show you the condition of my mind. But everything comes to him who knows how to wait, and sometimes too to him who doesn't, and so at last those elephants, or rather one of ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard

... emerging from the kindly shelter of the fudge pan, "she glared. She wondered why those two idiotic individuals were stalking toward her without a word or knock or smile, when suddenly the hinder one exploded and vanished, while the other ignominiously—stark, mute, ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz

... Chum could limp around on the fasthealing foreleg, he and Link had established a friendship that was a boon to both and a stark astonishment ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune

... her face, leaving her skin stark against the bright red of her hair. For a moment he thought she was going to faint. Then a little of ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett

... the Persian, is eloquently descriptive of the general appearance of the dervish: The dervish had the dullard air, The maddened look, the vacant stare, That bhang and contemplation give. He moved, but did not seem to live; His gaze was savage, and yet sad; What we should call stark, staring mad. All down his back, his tangled hair Flowed wild, unkempt; his head was bare; A leopard's skin was o'er him flung; Around his neck huge beads were hung, And in his hand-ah! there's the rub- He carried ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... Though pain be stark and bitter And days in darkness creep Not to that depth I sink me That asks the world ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... Day, when last I heard. Jim came down here to see me once. That was before he broke the pledge; but afterwards he would always take drink when he was ashore, and a little drink would send him stark, staring mad. Ah! it was a bad day that ever he took a glass in his hand again. First he dropped me, and then he quarrelled with Sarah, and now that Mary has stopped writing we don't know how things ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... companions and followers! The one typical Puritan soldier of the war—mark you!—was a Southern, and not a Northern, soldier; Stonewall Jackson, of the Virginia line. And, if we should care to pursue the subject farther back, what about Ethan Allen and John Stark and Mad Anthony Wayne—Cavaliers each and every one? Indeed, from Israel Putnam to "Buffalo Bill," it seems to me the Puritans have had rather the best of it in turning out Cavaliers. So the least said about the Puritan and the Cavalier—except as blessed memories or horrid ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... drums were beating to arms, and a company rushed out of the barracks to protect the patrol. Washington's troops had begun the fight with an attack upon the outermost picket on the Pennington road, and Stark, with the van of Sullivan's party, gave three cheers and rushed upon the enemy's pickets near the river with their bayonets, and they, astonished at the suddenness and fury of the charge, were seized with a panic and fled ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley

... its adjacent parish of Portincross my father was the minister, lies on a hillside above the little bay of Caple, and looks squarely out on the North Sea. Round the horns of land which enclose the bay the coast shows on either side a battlement of stark red cliffs through which a burn or two makes a pass to the water's edge. The bay itself is ringed with fine clean sands, where we lads of the burgh school loved to bathe in the warm weather. But on long holidays the sport was to go farther afield among ...
— Prester John • John Buchan

... insight, into the recesses of man's natural appetites will never be surpassed. How under the glance of his Norman anger, all manner of pretty subterfuges fade away; and "the real thing" stands out, as Nature and the Earth know it—"stark, bleak, terrible and lovely." His subjects may not wander very far from the basic situations. He does not deal in spiritual subtleties. But when he hits, ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys

... strangers, without a friend, unable to speak a word of the language, and not even sure before you start whether you will be given enough to eat. Either it is that saddest of courage forced on the timid by necessity, or, as Doctor Johnson would probably have said, it is stark insensibility; and I am afraid when I look at her I silently agree with the apostle of common sense, and take it for granted that she is incapable of deep feeling, for the altogether inadequate reason that she has a certain ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim

... it was still stark calm, and the sky had a fine, clear, settled aspect that, combined with a slight disposition to rise on the part of the brig's barometer, led me to anticipate that the calm was destined to endure for a few hours longer. For this I was devoutly thankful, for I had been toiling like a slave ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood

... most extraordinary thing that men should be 'judges,' being convinced in their deepest consciousness that God is the only Foundation and Refuge, and yet that the conviction should have absolutely no influence on their conduct. The same stark, staring inconsequence is visible in many other departments of life, but in this region it works its most tragic results. The message which many of my hearers need most is—follow out your deepest convictions, and be true to the inward voice which condenses all your ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... lifeless objects one could well imagine. It is impossible even for those whose imaginations are most powerful, to infuse life into a thing so utterly dead as an embalmed body; and this fact is partly responsible for that atmosphere of stark, melancholy, sobriety and aloofness which surrounds the affairs of ancient Egypt. In reading these verses, it is imperative for their right understanding that the mummies and their resting-places should be banished from the thoughts. It is not always a simple ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall

... come to Zeke Higgins, and he had not hesitated to seize it. His desire for a larger life than that of the tiny, scrabbly mountain farm had been early excited; it had persisted; it had increased steadily, though the possibility of its realization had seemed remote. Stark poverty demanded that he remain to coax a scant living from the soil for his mother. Yet, his determination was fixed. He got some smattering of education, along with Plutina, from a kindly Quaker who came among the "Boomers" of the Blue Ridge as a missionary school-teacher. Thus, ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily

... {167} for he believed that they had been. The issue was, Could these rights be restored by coercion? The Conservatives and the Church said Yes. True to his political faith, Mr Laurier said No. Up and down the province of Quebec he was denounced by the ultramontane leaders. Here was sheer, stark Liberalism of the brand the Church had condemned. Bishop Lafleche declared that no Catholic could without sin vote for the chief of a party who had formulated publicly such an error, and Archbishop Langevin called upon every true son of the Church to stand by those who stood by it. In ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton

... domestic calamity human nature betrays its inherent weakness. At such times the artificial outer covering of civilization falls away, and the soul stands forth, stark, primitive, forlorn, and cries aloud. The strain of the tremendous tragedy which had entered his house, swift-footed and silent, was too much for Sir Philip. He sank on his knees by the side of his unconscious son, whimpering ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... like a flash of lightning. For a brief second they saw Blythe hanging from the collapsing structure. Then they saw him let go. Perhaps they did not know the full significance of Roy's predicament. They thought Blythe stark mad. ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... to get a propulsive force into our logic which the ordinary logic of a bare, stark self-identity in each thing never attains to. The objects of our thought now ACT within our thought, act as objects act when given in experience. They change and develop. They introduce something other than themselves along with them; and this other, at first only ideal or potential, presently ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... steeped her in misery and poverty, and now, thanks to the thousand devils, I have discovered a new torture for her heart. She thought to solace her life with a love-episode! Sweet little epicure that she was! She shall have her little crooked lover, shan't she? Oh, yes! She shall have him, cold and stark and livid, with that great, black, heavy hunch, which no back, however broad, can bear, Death, sitting between ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... really, just now, stark and bare of one commonsence idea. In the writing line, I was never so involved before and see no end to the ink-(an humorous voluntary provocative, I trust of much merriment)-creasing pressure of ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... chemical analysis; but the analysis will not convey to us the sensations of the sunshine and the dancing brine. One of the blank-verse pieces of Men and Women rebukes a youthful poet of the transcendental school whose ambition is to set forth "stark-naked thought" in poetry. Why take the harp to his breast "only to speak dry words across the strings"? Better hollo abstract ideas through the six-foot Alpine horn of prose. Boys may desire the interpretation into bare ideas of those thronging objects ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... sight, for she looked the perfect incarnation of hate. Her green eyes blazed with lurid fire, and the white, sharp teeth seemed to almost shine through the blood which dabbled her mouth and whiskers. She gnashed her teeth, and her claws stood out stark and at full length on every paw. Then she made a wild rush up the wall as if to reach us, but when the momentum ended fell back, and further added to her horrible appearance for she fell on the kitten, and rose with her black fur smeared with its brains and blood. Amelia turned quite ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker

... suddenly as we dropped down to the east fork of the Maumee, and asked us rudely where we were going. They had no right, of course, but they were our elders, to whom it is necessary to be respectful, and they were rather terrifying, with their great bows, tall as they were, stark naked except for a strip of deerskin, and their feathers on end like the quills of an angry porcupine. We had no weapons ourselves, except short hunting-bows,—one does not travel with peace on his mouth and a war weapon at his back,—so ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al

... lest some one should say, 'See, where goes that fool!' The syndics and others forming the assembly remained confounded, first, by the difficult methods proposed by the other masters, and next by that of Filippo, which appeared to them stark nonsense. He appeared to them to render the enterprise impossible by his two propositions—first, by that of making the cupola double, whereby the great weight to be sustained would be rendered altogether unmanageable, and next by the proposal of ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner

... mother they went out of the house side by side, not dreaming that they were anything more than cousins, whose fathers were half-brothers, little guessing that within a few short hours the father of each and the mother of both would be lying stiff and stark in the chambers ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... and the colonies, acting for the first time in general concert, had acquired some dim notion of their united strength. Soldiers and officers by and by to be arrayed against one another had here fought as allies,—John Stark and Israel Putnam by the side of William Howe; Horatio Gates by the side of Thomas Gage,—and it had not always been the regulars that bore off the palm for skill and endurance. One young man, of immense energy and fiery temper, united to rare prudence and fertility ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske

... like fields of distant crusted snow. Castellated crags loomed from the mystic river like fortified islands. Cattle, silent, enormously aggrandized, emerged like fabled beasts of the eld, and stared upon him, their jaws dripping with dew. Bulls roared from the obscure deeps. Dead trees, with stark and sinister arms, menaced warningly. All was as unreal as the world of pain's delirium, and yet was as beautiful as the poet's vision; and the ranger, feeling that he was looking upon one of Nature's rarest displays, removed his hat ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland

... Elliott, who was staying with his governor on the West Cliff, where the old gentleman has taken a house. Well, you know, I told you what a madcap fellow Poole is; and what should he do, but tell Elliott that I was going stark mad for a girl that couldn't have me because her dad had engaged her to somebody else; and then he shewed him the music that was lying on the table with your name on it. So you may guess how Elliott stared, and all the questions he asked me about you, and about ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various

... Chancellor's to-day, my Lord told him that there was a Great Seal passing for Sir W. Pen, through the impossibility of the Comptroller's duty to be performed by one man; to be as it were joynt-comptroller with him, at which he is stark mad; and swears he will give up his place, and do rail at Sir W. Pen the cruellest; he I made shift to encourage as much as I could, but it pleased me heartily to hear him rail against him, so that I do see thoroughly that they are not like to be great friends, for he cries out against ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... not— no! It's my heart. I'm sore night and day thinkin' of my son, and him lying out there at night without a rag of dry clothing, and water that the bullocks won't drink, and maggots in the meat; and every day one of his friends laid out stark and cold, and one day—'imself perhaps. If anything were to 'appen to him. I'd never forgive meself—here. Ah! Miss Katherine, I wonder how you bear it—bad news comin' every day—And Sir John's face so sad—And ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... against the war. Then he remembered the tones of her voice as she had told her Belgian adventures.... Was it love? Was it tenderness? Was it sensuality? The difference was indiscernible; it had no importance. Against the stark background of infinite existence all human beings were alike and all their ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... significantly, and cheering followed. "The high wall of Tibet, a stark refusal to open the door to the wayfarer, I can understand; but, friend"—he turned to the young peer—"friend, I cannot understand a defence of him who opens the door upon terms of mutual hospitality, and then, in the red blood of him who has so contracted, blots ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... It was nothing like the Polar regions of Earth. Stark desolation. A naked land seemingly upheaved by some gigantic cataclysm of nature, lying tumbled and broken where it had fallen in convulsive agony; and then congealed forever in a grip ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings

... limitations of an incarnate life; if we consider the manifest potencies of the power that He has brought into operation in the present Christian life; and if we consider, side by side with these, the stark, staring contradictions and as manifest inevitable limitations of the effects of that power, His calling carries in its depths the assurance that what He means shall be done, that Jesus Christ has not died in vain, that He has not ascended ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... coming over to his son and putting a hand on each of his shoulders, "that ye could not count twenty straight ahead, if your salvation depended on it. And to think that I have been raising a great fellow like you to be ordered about by a slip of a girl. Ye're crazy," he said, going on, "stark, ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane

... when Barter had finally closed the sutures in the skull-pan of the ape, renewing again the ape's skull, with the brain of Keller inside. Keller was finished. He had not moved on the table. Even his chest stood still, stark and lifeless. Barter had not troubled to restore Keller's skull-pan. What ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks

... officers helped also to unite the colonists. They made sport of the awkward provincial soldiers. The best American officers were often thrust aside to make place for young British subalterns. But, in spite of sneers, Washington, Gates, Montgomery, Stark, Arnold, Morgan, Putnam, all received their training, and learned how, when the time came, to fight even ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.

... turned with a grave face to us and said: "It's my opinion that these birds are all stark, staring mad, and that this is an enchanted island. I therefore propose that we should either put about ship and fly in terror from the spot, or land valorously on the island, and sell our lives ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... hem everydel. And thei it halsen alle wel And sein it is a tokne of goode; Bot til sche wiste hou that it stode, Sche hath no confort in hire herte, Upon the morwe and up sche sterte, And to the See, wher that sche mette The bodi lay, withoute lette 3080 Sche drowh, and whan that sche cam nyh, Stark ded, hise harmes sprad, sche syh Hire lord flietende upon the wawe. Wherof hire wittes ben withdrawe, And sche, which tok of deth no kepe, Anon forth lepte into the depe And wolde have cawht him in hire arm. This infortune of double harm The goddes fro the hevene above Behielde, ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower

... hundred and forty-eight actually engaged, twelve men having been left by Zagonyi in charge of his train. The Prairie Scouts reported a loss of thirty-one out of one hundred and thirty: half of these belonged to the Irish Dragoons. In a neighboring field an Irishman was found stark and stiff, still clinging to the hilt of his sword, which was thrust through the body of a Rebel who lay beside him. Within a few feet a second Rebel lay, shot through ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... lost, too, in a maze of thoughts. She sat straight as a lance, tense, alive, keen, staring into the narrow bore of the high ceiled cut, thinking feverishly. Was Kenset really alive? Had Courtrey been square with her? Or was he even now lying stiff and stark somewhere in the high cuts, his dark eyes dull with death, that beating heart forever stilled? She caught her breath with a whistling sigh, felt her head swim at the picture. If he was—if—he—was—! ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe

... rested again and walked on farther till twelve o'clock, when we were again overcome by weariness and the burning heat of the day. In a sandy slope facing northwards Kasim digged out cool sand in which we burrowed stark naked with only our heads out. To protect ourselves from sunstroke we made a screen by hanging up clothes on the spade. At six o'clock we got up again and walked for seven hours. Our strength was giving way, and we had to rest more frequently. ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... that gaunt Professor Noting his man; that stark Assessor Of faulty play in the bat's possessor Clapped for his foeman, We who had seen that figure splendid Guarding the stumps so well defended Wept and cheered when by craft was ended Innings ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale

... the circular pool formed by the wash of centuries; the pool he was intending to make his death-bed. At first it was indistinct by reason of the shadow from the bank; but it emerged thence and took shape, which was that of a human body, lying stiff and stark upon the surface ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... "here is a lesson for architects. Build no shutters to a house when the man that has to live in it has a spark of imagination, else will he go stark raving mad before the mortar's dry. Window shutters are window shutters, but they are the doors of Bedlam as well. Now Gaydon should have slept in this room. Gaydon's a great man. Gaydon has a great deal of observation and common sense, and was never plagued with a flim-flam of fancies. ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason

... FLORIO sent (to cool His flame for BIANCAFIORE) to school, Where pedant made his pathic bum For her sake suffer martyrdom? Did not a certain lady whip 885 Of late her husband's own Lordship? And though a grandee of the House, Claw'd him with fundamental blows Ty'd him stark naked to a bed-post, And firk'd his hide, as if sh' had rid post 890 And after, in the sessions-court, Where whipping's judg'd, had honour for't? This swear you will perform, and then I'll set you from th' inchanted den, And the ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... pride he and Najib had taken in the new business they had secured for the home office; and the fact that this new business had brought an increase of pay to them both as well as to the fellaheen. He showed how great a triumph for the mine was this vast increase of business; and the stark necessity of impressing the new customers by the promptitude and uniform excellence of all shipments. He pointed out the utter collapse to this and to all the rest of the mine's connections which a strike would ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... one-fifteenth of the state tax. Previous to the Revolution of 1776 ten distinct settlements were made by colonists from Londonderry, N.H., all of which became towns of influence and importance. Notable among the descendants of these colonists were Matthew Thornton, Henry Knox, Gen. John Stark, Hugh McCulloch, Horace Greeley, Gen. George B. McClellan, Salmon P. Chase, and Asa Gray. From 1771 to 1773 "the whole emigration from Ulster is estimated at 30,000 of whom 10,000 ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black

... Petrullo heard this he took water from a little fountain, sprinkled it on the ground, and in an twinkling of an eye a large river rose up on the spot. When the ogre saw this new obstacle, and that he could not make holes so fast as they found bungs to stop them, he stripped himself stark naked and swam across to the other side of the river with his clothes upon ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile

... cease, for why should I prolong My notes, and vex a Singer with a Song? Oh thou with pen perpetual in thy fist! Dubbed for thy sins a stark Miscellanist, So pleased the printer's orders to perform For Messrs. Longman, Hurst and Rees and Orme. Go—Get thee hence to Paternoster Row, Thy patrons wave a duodecimo! (Best form for letters from a distant land, It fits the pocket, nor fatigues ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... almost obliterated trail of the Frenchman and his Malemutes until he came to the lake; and then he knew that Jean de Gravois had spoken the truth, for he found the missionary with his face half buried in the slush, stark dead. ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood

... shall go stark, staring mad!" But I could say no more; leaving her side I sat down on a low stone at some distance, with a stunned feeling in my brain, and something like despair in my heart. That she had told me the truth I could no longer doubt for one moment: it was impossible for her crystal ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson

... women still lingered in the Strand, and the city stood up like a prison, hard and stark in the cold, penetrating light of morning. She sat upon a pillar's base, her eyes turned towards the cabmen's shelter. The horses munched in their nose-bags, and the pigeons came down from their roosts. She was dressed in an ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore

... far north of the Transvaal. By a series of accidents he discovers a plot for a great Kaffir rising, and by a combination of luck and courage manages to frustrate it. From beginning to end it is a book of stark adventure. The leader of the rising is a black missionary, who believes himself the incarnation of the mediaeval Abyssinian emperor Prester John. By means of a perverted Christianity, and the possession ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson

... Madagascar. From here he sailed out to the East Indies, and preyed on the ships of the East India Company. Several times he was wrecked, once he was the only survivor, and swam ashore at Madagascar stark naked. The unusual sight of a naked Englishman spread terror amongst the natives who were on the beach, and they all fled into the jungle except one, a woman, who from previous personal experience knew that this was but a human being and not a sea devil. ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse

... shine not till it is dark. Seven cities strove for Homer's bones, 'tis said, "Through which the living Homer begged for bread." When in their coffins they lay dumb and stark Shakespeare began to live, Dante to sing, And Poe's sweet lute began its werbelling. Rear monuments of fame or flattery— Think ye their sleeping souls are made aware? Heap o'er their heads sweet praise or calumny— ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... melancholy glen, Made gloomy by tall firs and cypress dark, Whose roots, like any bones of buried men, Push'd through the rotten sod for fear's remark; A hundred horrid stems, jagged and stark, Wrestled with crooked arms in hideous fray, Besides sleek ashes with their dappled bark, Like crafty serpents climbing for a prey, With many blasted oaks ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... heart-sickening. Children began their life in the coal mines at five, six, or seven years of age. Girls and women worked like boys and men, they were less than half clothed, and worked alongside of men who were stark naked. There were from twelve to fourteen working hours in the twenty-four, and these were often at night. Little girls of six or eight years of age made ten to twelve trips a day up steep ladders to the surface, carrying half a hundred weight of coal in ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney

... words,—yet now, as he stretched out his arms to her, she held him off, fearful that she would find herself weeping on his breast. It would be sweet to do it—like getting home after a long voyage. But dizzily, with a stark clinging to a rock of integrity in herself, she fought him off, more with her militant spirit than with ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... to resist hostile attacks, but could only obtain a canoe. It was long and narrow, hollowed-out of the trunk of a single tree. She carried Bombay, Gaetano, two Belooch soldiers, and a captain, with twenty stark-naked savage sailors. In this Speke set out on the 3rd of March, 1858, while Burton, too sick to move, remained at Ujiji. Speke and his attendants had moved but a short distance along the shore, when a storm came on, and they had to camp till ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... the smell of hunger was in the air. The armed men were cadaverous. Lights came on, and stark, harsh shadows lay black upon the ground. Calhoun's captors were uniformed, but the uniforms hung loosely upon them. Where the lights struck upon their faces, their cheeks were hollow. They were emaciated. And there were the splotches of pigment ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster

... interrupted. However, more reason that we should make the most of the present moment, so come along, Charlie, and let us have some real good fucking. We have plenty of time, mamma is not very well. No one will come near us, and there is nothing to hinder our having a jolly time of it, all three stark naked together, ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... daylight shines along the beach Dried to a grey monotony of tone, And stranded jelly-fish melt soft upon The sun-baked pebbles, far beyond their reach Sparkles a wet, reviving sea. Here bleach The skeletons of fishes, every bone Polished and stark, like traceries of stone, The joints and knuckles hardened each to each. And they are dead while waiting for the sea, The moon-pursuing sea, to come again. Their hearts are blown away on the hot breeze. Only the shells and stones can wait to be Washed ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell

... especially in this land that lies between Asia, where the occult is almost the obvious, and Europe, where it is always returning with a fresher and younger vigour. The truth becomes strangely luminous in this wilderness between two worlds, where the rocks stand out stark like the ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... emergencies a party of American Indians generally manage to carry off their dead and wounded, but the haste was too urgent in this case. The stark figures were left stretched on the prairies where they had fallen, and a number of animals also lay motionless near. The wounded were taken care of, but the dead were left ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis

... warnings, then, for you, [204] my slave, How you abuse the person of the king; Or else I swear to have you whipt stark nak'd. [205] ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe

... face to the breaking dawn, Lily so white, that through all the dark, Hast kept lone watch on the dewy lawn, Deeming thy comrades grown cold and stark; Soon shall the sunbeam, joyous and strong, Dry the tears in thy stamens of gold— Glinteth the day up merry and long, And ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins

... command of the Northern army, which had gathered to resist the great force which was marching south from Canada under John Burgoyne. He found the field already prepared by General Schuyler, a much more able officer. Stark had defeated and captured a strong detachment at Bennington, and Herkimer had won the bloody battle of Oriskany; the British army was hemmed in by a constantly-increasing force of Americans, and was able to drag along only a mile a day; Burgoyne and his men were disheartened ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson

... dark—in the blinding dark; Away from the sunshine bright above: Away from the gaze of those they love, They are lying stony and stark. ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... fellow-creatures, and to beautify their lives of machinery and reality with those imaginative graces and delights, without which the heart of infancy will wither up, the sturdiest physical manhood will be morally stark death, and the plainest national prosperity figures can show, will be the Writing on the Wall, - she holding this course as part of no fantastic vow, or bond, or brotherhood, or sisterhood, or pledge, or covenant, or fancy dress, ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*

... frequently met with unsuitable returns? "I could tell you, sir," says Macklin. "Well do sir; you are a man of sense and observation, and I should be glad of your definition." "Why then sir, the cause is impudence—nothing but stark-staring impudence." ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various

... twisted and knotted as if in rage, rose in groves like tidal waves. Smooth forests of beech-trees, round and gray, swept over the knolls and slopes of land in a mighty ground-swell. But most of all, the multitude of pines and firs, innumerable and monotonous, with straight, stark trunks, and branches woven together in an unbroken flood of darkest green, crowded through the valleys and over the hills, rising on the highest ridges into ragged crests, like the foaming edge ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke

... cam', and the Gordons ran, And they were stark and steady, And aye the word among them a' Was, ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson

... lime is the burg wall built, And pit and prison are stark and strong, And many a true man there is spilt, And many a right man doomed ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris

... caught her breath with a sob, and, burying her face in the pillows of a couch, gave way to her first tears in an agony of weeping. And he sat apart, not daring to touch her, nor to speak—wishing, with unavailing bitterness, that it had been he who was left lying stark and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... of the preface, but those which followed were less easy to understand. Then came 'Stark: A Conte,' about a midinette who, so far as I could gather, murdered, or was about to murder, a mannequin. It was rather like a story by Catulle Mendes in which the translator had either skipped or cut out every alternate ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm

... cities, castles stark and square Bastion'd with rocks that rival Nature's own; Red-furnaced baths, trim gardens planted fair With tree and flower the North ne'er yet had known; Long temple-roofs and statues poised on high With golden wings outstretch'd for tiptoe flight, Quivering in summer sky:— The land had rest, ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave



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