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Darkening   /dˈɑrkənɪŋ/  /dˈɑrknɪŋ/   Listen
Darkening

adjective
1.
Becoming dark or darker as from waning light or clouding over.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Darkening" Quotes from Famous Books



... you gain the height, from whose fair brow, The bursting prospect spreads immense around: And snatched o'er hill, and dale, and wood, and lawn, And verdant field, and darkening heath between, And villages embosomed soft in trees, And spiry towns by surging columns marked, Of household smoke, your eye excursive roams; Wide stretching from the hall, in whose kind haunt The hospitable genius lingers still, To where the broken landscape, by degrees, Ascending, roughens into ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... blue dust sifted into the shallow fold of the thickly wooded hills. It was early October, but a crisping frost had already stamped the maple trees with gold, the Spanish oaks were hung with patches of wine red, the sumach was brilliant in the darkening underbrush. A pattern of wild geese, flying low and unconcerned above the hills, wavered against the serene ashen evening. Howat Penny, standing in the comparative clearing of a road, decided that the shifting regular flight would not come ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... carrying the canoes on their heads and shoulders, and had reduced the camp to packs. Soon we were off upon the first pose of a regular Indian portage. Each of three Indians had upon his shoulders one of the canoes, his head within its hot and darkening sides, its bow pointing forward high in the air and its stern hanging low behind his heels. The other two squatted upon heel and toe, drew the broad strap of their carrying-thongs over their foreheads, and with a plunge and a grunt sprang to their feet, each with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... spake to them in mirth or in rebuke, his invitatory notes being, indeed, of all, the most repulsive and horrid. Clouds of snuff, aggravating the natural terrors of his speech, broke from each majestic nostril, darkening the air. He took it, not by pinches, but a palmful at once, diving for it under the mighty flaps of his old-fashioned waistcoat pocket; his waistcoat red and angry, his coat dark rappee, tinctured by dye original, and by adjuncts, with buttons of obsolete ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... But through the darkening scene, when the woods whisper together, and Tweed runs hoarsely below, the simple spirit holds uncomplaining and undaunted on his way: "I did not like them to think that I could ever be beaten by anything," he says. But at length the hand, tired with the pen, falls, and ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... ring against the sunset, and became a black and dropping rain to seaward. The long sinuous line of channel, fading with the light and ebbing with the tide, began to give off here and there light puffs of gray-winged birds like sudden exhalations. High in the darkening sky the long arrow-headed lines of geese and 'brant' pointed towards the upland. As the light grew more uncertain the air at times was filled with the rush of viewless and melancholy wings, or became plaintive with ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... the little day, was enough just then. It somehow seemed enough, just to be alive in the Spring, with the young green of the trees, the smell of smoke in the sunshine; I loved the old shops and books, the uproar darkening and brightening in the shabby daylight. Just a run of good-looking faces—and I was always looking for faces—would keep me amused. And London was but a dim-lit stage on which I could play in fancy any part I liked. I woke up in the morning like Byron to find myself famous; I was ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith

... standing back as he went by. The darkness was of their shadows and the covering of their faces. When he went through the Canal bridge, the evening glowed in its last deep colours, the sky was dark blue, the stars glittered from afar, very remote and approaching above the darkening cluster of the farm, above the paths of crystal along ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... it already, but of course there was plenty of room for me and my bag and my parcel, so I settled myself in a corner, not sorry to see that my companions were perfect strangers to me. It was now about seven in the evening, the sky was fast darkening. Off we jogged, going at a pretty good pace at first, but soon falling back to a very slow one as the road began to mount. I fancy I dozed a little, for the next thing I remember was the stopping of the omnibus at the little roadside inn, which was ...
— My New Home • Mary Louisa Molesworth

... should go round with them if he could. Just before eight o'clock (then about sundown, in that latitude) the cry of "All hands ahoy!'' was sounded down the fore scuttle and the after hatchway, and, hurrying upon deck, we found a large black cloud rolling on toward us from the southwest, and darkening the whole heavens. "Here comes Cape Horn!'' said the chief mate; and we had hardly time to haul down and clew up before it was upon us. In a few minutes a heavier sea was raised than I had ever seen, and as it was directly ahead, the little brig, which was no better than a bathing-machine, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... ways but given to thought, studied the stars that rode the darkening heavens and shook ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe

... behind the lonely western seas; Ulva, and Lunga, and the Dutchman's Cap had grown dark on the darkening waters; and the smooth Atlantic swell was booming along the sombre caves; but up here in Castle Dare, on the high and rocky coast of Mull, the great hall was lit with such a blaze of candles as Castle Dare had but rarely seen. And yet there did not seem to ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black

... clear bright weather, when every brook is vocal, and every torrent sonorous; brooks and torrents which are never muddy even in the heaviest floods. Days of unsettled weather, with partial showers, are very frequent; but the showers, darkening or brightening as they fly from hill to hill, are not less grateful to the eye than finely interwoven passages of gay and sad music are touching to the ear. Vapours exhaling from the lakes and meadows after sunrise in a hot ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers

... thought of it, scaring him, pass'd O'er his heart, while he now through the twilight rode fast As a shade from the wing of some great bird obscene In a wide silent land may be suddenly seen, Darkening over the sands, where it startles and scares Some traveller stray'd in the waste unawares, So that thought more than once darken'd over his heart For a moment, and rapidly seem'd to depart. Fast and furious he rode through the thickets which rose Up the shaggy hillside: ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith

... and yet strangely subdued. The dim road flickered before him as he trudged back to the sheep-camp. "Pop would 'a' done it that way," he said aloud. And for a space, down the darkening road he walked in that realm where the invisible walk, and beside him trudged the great, rugged shape of Annersley, the spirit of the old man who always "played square," feared no man, and fulfilled a purpose in the immeasurable scheme of things. ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... birds at Herald island refuse to move when pelted with stones, so unaccustomed were they to the presence of man. In addition to being very tame, game is plentiful, and it is not uncommon, off the Siberian coast, to see flocks of eider ducks darkening the air and occupying several hours in passing overhead. It was novel sport to see the natives throw a projectile known as an "apluketat" into one of these flocks with astonishing range and accuracy, bringing down the game with the ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse

... sea, it is the sea, In all its vague immensity, Fading and darkening in the distance! Silent, majestical, and slow, The white ships haunt it to and fro, With all their ghostly sails unfurled, As phantoms from another world Haunt the dim confines of existence! But ah! how few can comprehend Their signals, or to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... more ceremony, and with a darkening face, Philip Feltram made his way under the boughs of the thick oaks that grew there, leaving on Sir Bale's mind an impression that he had been watching some one at a distance, and had gone in consequence ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... mobilisation along the Austrian frontier, and that as a consequence a Council was held in Berlin. Of course we knew nothing of what was said in that Council, but when we heard that Russia's partial mobilisation had become general, we began to shudder at the gradual darkening ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking

... to the camp tents, to find Buck Tooth calmly smoking his red-stone Indian pipe, and gazing off in the darkening distance at nothing at all, as far as the ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker

... as to fill our mind with special joy and satisfaction, and, with a desire to impart these feelings to you. No other means presenting themselves at this moment than that of a letter (in some sense darkening the picture of the conceptions of our soul), we are willing to make use of it while waiting for means more effectual. Wishing thus to disburthen ourselves we find ourselves confused, not knowing where to begin, the greatness of each part exceeding ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... lion, gaunt with hunger. Glaring down the darkening glen; But a fiercer Power and stronger Drives him back into his den: For the fiend TORNADO rideth Forth with FEAR, his maniac bride. Who by shipwrecked shores abideth, With the she-wolf ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various

... noble dame on turret high, Who waits her gallant knight, Looks to the western beam to spy The flash of armour bright. The village maid, with hand on brow The level ray to shade, Upon the footpath watches now For Colin's darkening plaid. ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... the fourth match and folded the letter with care and replaced it in the envelope. He sat back on his heels and looked up into the darkening sky. Jacob Pooley. Well, well, well. If Fat Jakey Pooley, the register of the district, was mixed up in the business, the opposition would have its work cut out in advance. Yes, indeedy. For no man could walk more convincingly ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White

... slavery. The fear that any day might bring to them the cruel pangs of separation and the terrible knowledge that their loved ones had been condemned to the horrors of the auction block was with them always a constant shadow, darkening each waking moment. More and ever more, they were torn with anxiety for the future of the children and so they threw themselves with increasing faith and dependence upon the Master of all, and no visit of the children ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... especially securing the friendship of the Danish king, they might hope to overpower the insulated force of Sweden. The dread of the interference of foreign powers, the insubordination of the Protestants in his own states, and still more the storm which was gradually darkening along the whole of Protestant Germany, inclined the Emperor to peace, which his general, from opposite motives, was equally desirous to effect. Far from wishing for a state of things which would reduce him from the meridian of greatness and glory ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.

... on the little bush by the door-stone; they gleamed startlingly light in the dusk. A new moon hung beside the stalwart white chimney—all the house was a mouse-colored shadow against the darkening sky. The living-room windows showed as orange squares cut cheerfully from the night. Through the filmy whiteness of the cheese-cloth curtains, could be seen the fire, the table spread for supper, the gallant candles, Kirk lying on the ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price

... bank, the open ground led down into a wooded valley. On our side of the stream rose a thick plantation of fir-trees intersected by a winding path. Captain Stanwick stopped as we reached the place. His eyes rested, in the darkening twilight, on the narrow space pierced by the path among the trees. On a sudden he lifted his right hand, with the same cry of pain which we had heard before; with his left hand he took Miss Laroche by the arm. "There!" he said. "Look ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins

... curiosity. It might have been distasteful to such a young and secret refugee from under the pestilential shadow hiding the true, kindly face of his land. And the shadow, the attendant of his countrymen, stretching across the middle of Europe, was lying on him too, darkening his figure to my mental vision. "Without doubt," I said to myself, "he seems a sombre, even a desperate revolutionist; but he is young, he may be unselfish and humane, ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... the Square in the darkening twilight, holding fast to the hands of their mother and father, their ears failed to catch the faint cheep of a baby bird in distress, and they reached home entirely unaware of the tragedy that ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard

... Massachusetts but all through the free States. In Congress the battle was assuming an intensely bitter character. Here the South was the agitator. Here she kept the political waters in a state of violent ebullition. As the discord grew, sectionalism threw darkening and portentous shadows over the face of the Union. The South was insisting in all stages of passion that the tide of Abolition be checked in the North, that the flood of incendiary publications be suppressed at their sources in the free States. ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... the roadside hut there remained nothing but an enormous heap of embers, throwing afar a darkening red glow, in which Antonia's face appeared deeply flushed with excitement. Charles Gould, with only a short hesitation, pronounced the required pledge. He was like a man who had ventured on a precipitous path with ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... sandstorms from the Arabian desert. Thunder is associated with the rainy season, and it may have been assumed, therefore, that the thunder god was powerless against the sandstorm demon, who was chased, however, by the moon, and finally overcome by the triumphant sun when it broke through the darkening sand drift and brightened heaven and earth, "netting" the rebellious demon who desired to establish the rule of ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... such elevations, sunset produced many beautiful effects. The zenith was a deep blue, darkening opposite the setting sun, and paling over it into a peach colour, and that again near the horizon passing into a glowing orange-red, crossed by coppery streaks of cirrhus. Broad beams of pale light shot from the sun to the meridian, crossing the moon and the planet Venus. Far south, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... say, "cannot afford to put fine feeling into their private correspondence. They must turn it into copy." He longed to sit with the master in the studio when the last rays of the daylight were tremulously falling through the stained window, and to discuss far into the darkening night philosophies young and old. He longed for Reginald's voice, his little mannerisms, the very perfume ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck

... servant befitted the occasion: "The simplest words are best where all words are vain. Ten days ago a great artist in the noon of life, and with his glorious mental faculties in full power, but with the shade of physical infirmity darkening upon him, took his accustomed place among friends who have this day held his pall. Some of them had been fellow-workers with him for a quarter of a century, others for fewer years; but to know him well was to love him dearly, and all in whose name these lines are written mourn ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... escape," said the young Indian, his face darkening with anger at the savage taunt. "A man's death for a man, but jackals shall die like jackals. With hearts of terror and blood turned to water in their fear, they shall die a death more horrible than ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... That dying gave thee birth, Sweet Melancholy! For memory of the dead, In her dear stead, 'Bide thou with me, Sweet Melancholy! As purple shadows to the tree, When the last sun-rays sadly slope Athwart the bare and darkening earth, Art thou ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop

... number the host of the Mede? Their high-tiered galleys ride, Like locust-bands with darkening speed, Across the groaning tide. Who shall tell the many hoofed tramp That shakes the dusty plain? Where the pride of his horse is the strength of his camp, Shall the Mede forget to gain? O fair is the pride of the cohorts that ride, To the eye of the ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... polished grain, of a rich mahogany tint. The outside, also, well polished with sweet oil and stale milk, then enveloped in chamois leather. The rich dark coloring is the pledge of your safety—better there than darkening your ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... forest thickets. Even then men trembled before the wood and rock. 'This grove,' he cries, 'this hill with its leafy crown, is a god's dwelling, though whose we know not; the Arcadians believe Jove himself hath been visible, when often he shook the darkening aegis in his hand and gathered the storm-clouds. Thou seest these two towns likewise with walls overthrown, relics and memorials of men of old. This fortress lord Janus built, this Saturn; the name of this was once ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... distinction had come there in his train. Even the lower class of citizens ceased to follow the unhappy Prince, whose former indifferent reputation had exposed him to so many charges of impropriety and levity, and around whom there seemed now darkening suspicions of the ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... obey'd me, and the ship untied. In order seated on their banks, they sweep Neptune's smooth face, and cleave the yielding deep. When to the nearest verge of land we drew, Fast by the sea a lonely cave we view, High, and with darkening laurels covered o'er; Were sheep and goats lay slumbering round the shore Near this, a fence of marble from the rock, Brown with o'eraching pine and spreading oak. A giant shepherd here his flock maintains Far from the rest, and solitary reigns, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... disguising herself and her sex completely from any prying eyes; but indeed they scarcely met anyone as they hurried along through the narrow streets to the unfrequented wharf, where the boys had brought up the boat earlier in the day. Quickly they were all aboard, and were gliding through the darkening water, whilst the crowd gathered at quite a different part of the harbour showed where the launch of the fire ships ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... colour, of bracing sun; and then the winter closes in, when light is short, and the sun is low and cold; when the eye is grateful for the rich brown of naked fields, leafless woods, and misty distances. Yet there is a solemn charm about the darkening day, when the sun sets over the wide plain rolled in smoky vapours, and gilded banks of cloud; and then there is the long firelit evening to follow, when books give up their secrets ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... into every circle. But there was now a general uprising against him. The table grew merry at his sallies, for they thought him very witty, but that was no reason why the evening should be spoiled. Vandeuvres, whose subtle countenance was darkening visibly, insisted on his restoring Labordette his sex. The other men—Mignon, Steiner and Bordenave—who were by this time much exalted, also intervened with shouts which drowned his voice. Only the old gentleman ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... character of this examination or by the conjectures to which it gave rise, preserved his sang-froid, and eyed the Coroner as he might any other questioner, with suitable respect, but with no fear and but little impatience. And yet he must have known the horrible suspicion darkening the minds of many people present, and suspected, even if against his will, that this examination, significant as it was, was but the forerunner of another and yet more ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green

... the very same position as at first it was so hard to bend it from, with this one wide difference, that in the first case it was so in its own will, but now in His will. Perhaps thou thinkest I am darkening counsel: I do not wish to do so, but write just how things have happened to me in my small way. Ought we not to be willing to be bent or unbent any way? and if a bow is to "abide in strength," it must be unbent when it is not wanted. But as we have all different places to fill, ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall

... Hazzard, a rather noisy girl, who played Noel Belturbet, elected to go home with the Babcocks. This freed from all responsibility her brother Carter, who had suddenly appeared to act as escort. Julia, slipping up the darkening street, after a few moments spent in watching this crowd of curious young people, ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris

... wah is—doan lemme heah you talk no more 'bout gwine to de wah ur I gwine to w'ar you out wid a hickory—dat's whut I'll do—now you min'." She turned on Basil then; but Basil had retreated, and his laugh rang from the darkening ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.

... fading away, her arms grew cold, her breath scant; she no longer knew how to breathe life into him. For hours together she would roam about the spacious dismal room, and as she passed before the mirror and saw herself darkening in it, she thought she had ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... own section of the same Pullman, Alice Marcum sat and watched the twilight deepen and the lights of the little town twinkle one by one from the windows. Alone in the darkening coach the girl was not nearly so sure she was going to enjoy her forthcoming adventure. Loud shouts, accompanied by hilarious laughter and an occasional pistol shot, floated across the flat. She pressed her ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx

... of idleness. The prospect of sitting for hours in the darkening apartment, talking with Ziffak, who, instead of being willing to give information, was doing his most to withhold it, was not inviting, but beyond this, he was restless because he was haunted by those marvellous eyes, peeping ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis

... gain the height from whose fair brow The bursting prospect spreads immense around, And, snatched o'er hill and dale and wood and lawn, And verdant field and darkening heath between, And villages embosomed soft in trees, And spiry town, by surging columns marked Of household smoke, your eye extensive roams. . . To where the broken landscape, by degrees Ascending, roughens ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... hand, stretched and shook himself, lifted his shapely, sleek head and sniffed the wind. He trotted around the circle cast by the fire and looked out into the darkening shadows. It was plain that Shep's instincts were developing fast; he was ambitious to hunt. But sure in my belief that he was afraid of the black night and would stay in camp, I ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... plain speaking of Ibsen himself, who declared that Peer Gynt was diametrically opposed in spirit to Brand, and that it made no direct attack upon social questions, the critics of the later poem have too often persisted in darkening it with their educational pedantries. Ibsen did well to be angry with his commentators. "They have discovered," he said, "much more satire in Peer Gynt than was intended by me. Why can they not read the book as a poem? For as such I wrote it." It has been, however, the misfortune of Ibsen ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... turtle-dove's sad call arise In doubt and fear Through darkening skies, And pierce, O Lord, Thy justly-sealed ear, Where on the house-top, all night long She trills her ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble

... a dream of bliss, The speechless sufferer turns to kiss Her shadow, as it falls Upon the darkening walls. ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... drown; we, even we, shall drown! The River!" And women stood like things of stone, listening; and men shook their fists at the black sky and at that traveling mutter of the winds and waters; and the beasts sniffed at the darkening air. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... steamers back into the stream, and lie there jockeying a moment, and apparently watching each other's slightest movement, like sentient creatures; flags drooping, the pent steam shrieking through safety- valves, the black smoke rolling and tumbling from the chimneys and darkening all the air. People, people everywhere; the shores, the house- tops, the steamboats, the ships, are packed with them, and you know that the borders of the broad Mississippi are going to be fringed with humanity ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... golden locks of Marie Antoinette were defiled with the blood and sawdust, which Young France regarded as the most acceptable offering to the goddess of liberty; and who is that sharp-featured little man, sitting in the front row of the spectators of those heaven-darkening murders, with a red cap on his head, and a many-stringed harp in his hand, chanting the praises of the murderers, and exciting the drunken populace to greater horrors? Lebrun. Yes, the French Pindar is appointed poet-laureate to the guillotine, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... a day of fluffy mauve-tinted clouds that moved across the sky, sometimes darkening to deep blue where a small rainstorm trailed across the hills, sometimes brightening to moments of clear sunlight that gave blue shadows to the poplars and shone yellow on the smoke of the engine that puffed on painfully at the ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos

... rise of a long incline, and now stood at its crest, looking rather wistfully and eagerly over the darkening landscape in search of some human habitation. He knew to a certain extent where he was, and that within some few miles there was a monastic establishment of some repute. But five miles seemed a weary way to him now, and a sense of repulsion ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green

... Northwood jerked off his coat and wrapped it around her, taking the intense cold against his unprotected shoulders. The low, gray sky was rapidly darkening, and the feeble light of the sun could scarcely pierce the clouds. It was disturbing to know that even the summer temperature in the Antarctic was far ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... shadows were darkening the day, I met a little gypsy boy, dragging along, with incredible labor, a sack full of wood, which one needed not go far afield to surmise was neither purchased nor begged. The alarmed and guilty or despairing look which he cast at me was very touching. Perhaps he thought ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... seat of the wagon, directly behind the driver, and for a time, as we entered the darkening woods, his great shoulders blotted out all perspective as he drove on in stolid silence. Then, little by little, they disappeared like a rapidly fading negative. The woods were filled with Norway pines, hemlocks, spruce, and tamaracks-great, somber trees that must have shut out the ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw

... pigments and bases are subject to deoxidation, or to a loss of oxygen, in which case the colour is apt to deepen. Pigments generally are more affected by oxidation and fading in a water vehicle, and by deoxidation and darkening in one of oil. ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... slumber. She looked with but half-conscious fearfulness at the figures darkening her view. Sidney moved so that his face was in the light, and, bending near to her, asked if she recognised him. A smile—slow-forming, but unmistakable at last—amply justified what her grandfather had said. She made an effort to move her hand towards him. Sidney responded ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing

... Street! She would have no use for it. It should be a friend, a comrade, a fellow-servant of the great Master, taking counsel with them, asking their help. Government by the people for the people! It must be made real. These silent, thoughtful-looking workers, hurrying homewards through the darkening streets; these patient, shrewd-planning housewives casting their shadows on the drawn-down blinds: it was they who should be shaping the world, not the journalists to whom all life was but so much "copy." This monstrous conspiracy, once of the Sword, of the Church, ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome

... readily and accurately if the eye of the observer is screened from diffused light; therefore, a partial darkening of the room, which may be accomplished by means of curtains or hangings, is an advantage. On the other hand, the temperature at which the observation is made has a very considerable influence upon the results obtained, so that the arrangements for darkening the room must ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various

... that there was hope in the sound of the old man's familiar name. "He sent up a message this evening—'twas when thou wert with the King—and if we have anything to send with him it must be at Leith by the darkening to-morrow. I could get leave to go, if thou hadst any message," she added doubtfully, for she saw by Margaret's face that an idea had suddenly come to her, for she sat up and gazed into the twilight with bright eyes and ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson

... shape, but not his splendour, in the skirts of the white clouds which were closing in around him. Spring as it was, I thought I smelled snow in the air. But the vane which had drawn me shone brilliant against a darkening cloud, like a golden bird in the sky. We looked at each other, not in dismay exactly, but with a common feeling that the elements were gathering against us. The wise way would of course have been to turn at once and make for home; but ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... be a minute, dear; he's awfully anxious for you to see his dress. He's just darkening his eyelashes. That's all. He's Louis ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson

... consistently culminating in total destruction of life." He then quotes apparently the language of the text, "He consumed his body by Agni (the fire of) Samadhi," and says it is "a common expression for the effects of such ecstatic, ultra-mystic self-annihilation." All this is simply "a darkening of counsel by words without knowledge." Some facts concerning the death of Ananda are hidden beneath the darkness of the phraseology, which it is impossible for us to ascertain. By or in Samadhi he burns his body in ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien

... London. "Well—yes, sir," he said, with an unaccountable kind of reluctance. "It is going to London; but——" It was just starting, and I jumped into the first carriage; it was pitch dark. I sat there smoking and wondering, as we steamed through the continually darkening landscape, lined with desolate poplars, until we slowed down and stopped, irrationally, in the middle of a field. I heard a heavy noise as of some one clambering off the train, and a dark, ragged head suddenly put itself into my window. ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton

... love a Christian duty, then slavery is right; if slavery is wrong, then every slave-holder is a manstealer, and should be excommunicated as such without asking any further questions. Two statements more palpably illogical were never put forth for the darkening of counsel. But each extreme was eager to sustain the unreason of the opposite extreme as the only alternative of its own unreason, and so, what with contrary gusts from North and South, they fell into a place where two seas met and ran the ship aground. The attempts made from ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... else—the better then for me. But ours—what manner of child is this? the hair Buds flowerwise round his darkening lips and chin, This hand's young hardening palm knows how to bear The sword-hilt's poise that late I laid therein - Ha? ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... 2 to 4 inches high, stem about 1/2 inch in diameter. The cap is of a dull yellow color, olivaceous, darkening with age to a brownish tinge. It is oval-shaped, with ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin

... too swiftly the quiet village drew near, but my thoughts were neither of the village nor the night. As I sat and pulled silently upwards, life was entirely changing for me. Old thoughts, old passions, old aims and musings slipped from me and swept off my soul as the darkening river swept down ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... upon me like a peal of thunder from an unclouded summer sky. It was the knell of newly-awakened hopes—the darkening of newly-opening prospects. Silently I turned away under the cutting rebuke, ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur

... Over Vesuvius hung one broad gray stripe of mist, stretching across as far as Naples, and darkening all the small towns along the coast. The sea lay calm. Along the shore of the narrow creek that lies beneath the Sorrento cliffs, fishermen and their wives were at work already, some with giant cables drawing their boats to land, with the nets that had been cast the night before, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various

... by the will of the Heart of Heaven (Hurakan), and a great inundation came upon the heads of these creatures. . . . They were ingulfed, and a resinous thickness descended from heaven; . . . the face of the earth was obscured, and a heavy darkening rain commenced-rain by day and rain by night. . . . There was heard a great noise above their heads, as if produced by fire. Then were men seen running, pushing each other, filled with despair; they wished to climb upon their houses, and the ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... about to issue from that inauspicious portal, we could hardly do otherwise than pluck one of its flowers, and present it to the reader. It may serve, let us hope, to symbolise some sweet moral blossom that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... to introduce you to Tom Conglin, for you have both been acquainted with him and his liquors in the long ago, and you know he always kept the very best brands. But I think this old rye is better than any he has ever had before. It is only, however, as the Scripture says "darkening counsel by words," to tell either of you the quality of liquor, for you have only to taste to immediately and correctly pass judgment. It was in regard to this matter I asked for your counsel. Come, gentlemen, after paying your ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter

... ideas you have, John." She had not yet the gift of fancy, long denied to some in the emergent years of approaching womanhood. "I am tired, John," she said, as she dropped with hands clasped behind her head and hidden in the glorious abundance of darkening red hair, which lay around her on the brown pine-needles like the disordered ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... proceeding was to print an elaborate heading to her paper, and while away a quarter of an hour in adding ornamental flourishes to the double lines, and in elaborately darkening the down- strokes of her capitals. Then she would scribble on her blotting-paper, dropping intentional blots upon a clean page, and weaving them into a connected picture with no little skill and ingenuity. At this point a sharp reminder from teacher or scholar would bring her ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... that the Arabs believe kohol to be a sovereign specific against ophthalmia. Their English sisters often make the same mistake without the same excuse. A hairpin steeped in lampblack is the usual method of darkening the eyes in England, retribution following sooner or later in the shape of a total loss of the eyelashes. Eau de Cologne is occasionally dropped into the eyes, with the effect of making them brighter. The operation is painful, and it is said that half a dozen drops of whisky and the same quantity ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... to a hill-top, to get a good view, and strained his vision, gazing over the prairie. The sun was almost set, and all the hills were darkening, save now and then ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge

... intende.' For her, however, no earthly gate was to be thrown open wide. The gate through which she was to pass from suffering and death into life eternal and peace everlasting—(per angusta ad augusta)—was, however, not far distant. But she had still to wait awhile amid the ever-darkening shadows. ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower

... her while she munched a striped stick of peppermint. Her crimson bonnet had fallen from her sunlit hair and straight down from it to her bare little foot with its stubbed toe just darkening with dried blood, a sculptor would have loved the rounded slenderness in the curving long lines that shaped her brown throat, her arms and her hands, which were prettily shaped but so very dirty as to the nails, and her dangling bare leg. Her teeth were even and white, ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.

... darkening fast, as Matilda ran home. Even the western sky gave no glow, when she reached her own gate and went in. After all, she had run but a very little way, in her first hurry; the rest of the walk was ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner

... children's sorrows than ours, whether bursting into open cry of pain, or hid with shuddering under the veil, still passing over the soul as clouds do over heaven, not sullying it, not mingling with it;—darkening it perhaps long or utterly, but still not becoming one with it, and for the most part passing away in dashing rain of tears, and leaving the man unchanged; in no wise affecting, as our sorrow does, the whole tone of ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... dare say Effie has many a one." And she sighed too; but almost before she had time to ask herself what Effie's vexing thoughts might be, she was asleep. A voice, not Effie's nor Mrs Nesbitt's, soon awoke her. The twilight had deepened, and up and down the darkening room John Nesbitt was walking, with a step quicker than was usual. Christie fancied there was something like impatience in his step. He soon came and leaned on the window, close to the place where Effie sat, and Christie heard him say, in ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson

... which a man, branded with the worst crime known to a cattle country, should set out to face his fellow men. There should have been darkening clouds on every horizon. There should have been distant growlings of thunder, and every now and then the heavens should have been "rent in twain with appalling floods of cruel light," to match the hopeless gloom of ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... and passed through the crowd; the priestess made a motion as if she would have stayed him, then she drew herself up proudly and refrained. They heard his voice again singing as he passed into the darkening woods, ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell

... without a word to the door, and, opening it, called out to Hinge, who stood waiting for me in the darkening passage, bidding him to mount. He came ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray

... over, half winged off from the pillow. I fanned the peacock plumes slowly to and fro in the delicious air, gazed with a suppressed sigh on the darkening West, and repeated with a rhythmical beat the beautiful Hebrew poem in Ecclesiasticus, which I had so often recited through many long years by the side of that sick-bed, to soothe the ear of the sufferer. I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... said I, as I took the first delightful whiff; and F——, darkening the window that looked out on the verandah, gave me a fugitive look of recognition, and then entering and making his salutation in a kindly hearty manner, asked me to eat my ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... boat can live for a moment. From the Point downwards, although the water is covered with foam, only one dangerous place has to be passed. Toward that spot the stalwart half-breeds bent all their energy in forcing the canoe down with the current. The canoe shot over the darkening rapid with the speed of an arrow. If but one or two persons had been in it, the chances are the passage would have been made in safety. As it was one wrong turn of the paddle by the younger half-breed did the mischief. The bottom barely touched a sharp-pointed hidden rock, ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr

... cathedral of Winchester, a very perfect example of English Perpendicular. Nor do I think that you can, on the whole, better the arrangement, unless, perhaps, by adding buttresses to some of the bars, as is done in the cathedral at Gloucester; these buttresses having the double advantage of darkening the window when seen from within, and suggesting, when it is seen from without, the idea of its being divided by two stout party walls, with a ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... northward a chaos of sombre peaks rose, piled up like thunder-clouds along the horizon; east and south the darkening wilderness spread like a pall. Westward, crawling out into the mist from our very feet, the gray waste of water moved under the dull sky, and flat waves slapped the squatting rocks, heavy ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers

... and went back thither no more. The whole soil of our farm, for a long time afterwards, seemed but the sodded earth over her grave. I could not toil there, nor live upon its products. Often, however, in these years that are darkening around me, I remember our beautiful scheme of a noble and unselfish life; and how fair, in that first summer, appeared the prospect that it might endure for generations, and be perfected, as the ages rolled away, into the system of ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... to the charge preferred by Sergeant Overton. Hinkey, too, who was behind a barred door in one of the cells, listened with darkening brow. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock

... rolled on, through thickening air and darkening sky, air thick also with a smell of smoke which it was odd no one took note of; until the horses trotted round a sudden turn of the road into the very cause of it all. The blue was spotted now with faint ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... swiftly. The mother's call, growing ever more anxious, more insistent, swept over the darkening hillside. "Perhaps," I thought, with sudden twinges and alarms of conscience, "perhaps I set you all wrong, little chap, in giving you the taste of salt that day, and teaching you to trust things that meet you in the wilderness." That is generally ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... of the valley was no safe campsite. It could not be so long as that monstrosity on the hillside behind them roared and howled its rage to the darkening sky. Trailing the wolverines, the men caught up with the animals drinking from a small spring and thankfully shared that water. Then they pushed on, not able to forget that somewhere in the peaks about must lurk the Throg flyer ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... you more of the Fly-fishing for a Trout; which I may have time enough to do, for you see it rains May butter. First for a Mayfly: you may make his body with greenish-coloured crewel, or willowish colour; darkening it in most places with waxed silk; or ribbed with black hair; or, some of them, ribbed with silver thread; and such wings, for the colour, as you see the fly to have at that season, nay, at that very day on the water. Or you may make the Oak-fly: with an orange, tawny, and black ground; and the ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton

... if I found afterwards that it was only on the roof of a stable? It shone, and that was enough. And when the sun had gone below the horizon, and the fields and the river were dusky once more, there it glittered still over the darkening earth, a symbol of that faith which is "the evidence of things not seen," and it made my heart swell as at a chant from the prophet Isaiah. What matter then whether it hung over a stable-roof or ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... contrast like pillars of ebony; and wherever the foliage was thinnest, the level rays shining through imparted to the sere leaves a translucence and splendor that was like the stained glass in the windows of some darkening cathedral. All along the river a white mist began to rise, a slight wind sprang up and the vapor drifted, drowning the reeds and bushes, and wreathing its ghostly arms about the old trees: and watching the mist, and listening to the "hallowed airs and symphonies" whispered by the low wind, I felt ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson

... hero, who had broken his enemies to pieces, would now (they hoped) draw his sword glittering with victory, and, as Hercules did against the Lernean serpent, or Theseus the Minotaur, would fight against the threatening monster which was gnawing away all the raptures of love, and darkening all their joy and converting it into ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... that scene was fair, and many a yearning glance was cast over that peaceful evening scene from the spot where the rebels awaited their defeat; and when the fight was over, many a noble fellow lifted his head from the blood-stained heather to strive with darkening eyeballs to behold that landscape, over which, as over his life and his cause, the shadows of night and of gloom were ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... his home field, his wall-enclosed patch of kitchen garden, the long, low house itself lay like pieces from a child's play-box stretched out upon the carpet. Only to-night there was no mist. They made their cautious way downwards through the clearest of darkening atmospheres. On the hillsides, as they dropped down, they could hear the music of an occasional sheep bell. Rabbits scurried away from the headlights of the car, an early owl flew hooting over their heads. Tallente, tired with his journey, perhaps a little worn ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim



Words linked to "Darkening" :   change of color, obfuscation, blackening, darken, dark



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