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Dusky   Listen
adjective
Dusky  adj.  
1.
Partially dark or obscure; not luminous; dusk; as, a dusky valley. "Through dusky lane and wrangling mart."
2.
Tending to blackness in color; partially black; dark-colored; not bright; as, a dusky brown. "When Jove in dusky clouds involves the sky." "The figure of that first ancestor invested by family tradition with a dim and dusky grandeur."
3.
Gloomy; sad; melancholy. "This dusky scene of horror, this melancholy prospect."
4.
Intellectually clouded. "Though dusky wits dare scorn astrology."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dusky" Quotes from Famous Books



... Simpson was not a pleasant vis-a-vis. He wore the same picturesque ruffianliness of apparel as his fellows, but the resemblance stopped there. He lacked their dusky bloom, their clearness of eye, the suppleness and easy flow of muscle that is the hall-mark of these frontiersmen. He was fat and squat and had not the rich bronzing of wind, sun, and rain. His small, black eyes ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... light lay upon the crags, then deepened and spread, penetrating the darkness below, which was no longer black, but dusky purple. Rosemary's heart sang as she climbed, and the fragrance of the lily thrilled her soul with pure delight. The path was smooth, now, and thorns no longer hurt her feet. The hand that held the lily, however, was bleeding, from some sharp thorn ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... the Earl, drawing his dark-red eyebrows together, while the same dusky glow kindled on his brow—"Hast thou not learned to tell ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... immured beneath the dusky earth; or, as the ancient poet speaks, "is shooting into the ocean, and sinks into the western sea." The whole face of the ground was overspread with shades, and what the painters of nature call "dun obscurity." Only a few superior eminences, tipt with streaming silver, the tops of groves and lofty ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp

... not alone. With him went his familiar spirit, his guardian angel, his lady, his step-sister—a dusky dame of barn-like proportions. Arrived at Nepenthe they rented a small villa, rather out of the way, which they called the Residency. The change of climate did them good. So did the appointment. He was now a person of consequence—the sole representative ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... Summer stay? In distant sunny places, 'Midst palms and dusky faces, Where they spin the cocoa thread, Where the generous trees drop bread, Where the lemon-groves give alms, And Nature works her daily charms, Among the rice-fields, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various

... or shares. The huge great clouds move slowly, gently, as Reluctant the quick sun should shine in vain, Holding in bright caprice their rain. And when of colours none, Not rose, nor amber, nor the scarce late green, Is truly seen,— In all the myriad gray, In silver height and dusky deep, remain The loveliest, Faint purple flushes ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman

... good-night upon the stairs, he detained her a minute to murmur with a soft light in his dusky eyes,— ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... sunset now, just beginning to be dusky. The sad gray twilight was over everything, and as the figures retreated they merged into a single dark mass in the throat of the street. As this mass reached Jackson Street corner, there was an outcry. In the peaceful stillness of ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain

... those vast terraces buried in primordial forest, of whose makers there is now no human memory. With La Perouse he linked "The Island Nights Entertainments," and it never palled upon him that in the dusky stabbing of the "Island of Voices" something poured over the stabber's hands "like warm tea." Queer incommunicable joy it is, the joy of the vivid phrase that turns the statement of ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... landlord, kicking at what seemed to be a bundle of sacking down behind the door, shouted—"Jo! Ho, Jo! Wake up, you sleepy-headed nigger! Be alive, boy, and show this gentleman's horses to the stables." Upon a repetition of which charges a tall, gaunt, dusky figure lifted itself from out of the dark corner, and grew taller and more gaunt as it stretched itself into waking with a grin which was the most visible part of it, by reason of two long rows of ivory gleaming in the red glare. The hard words ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... I think of? I asked myself as I opened my umbrella. How should I amuse my imagination, that harsh, dusky, sloshy, winter afternoon, as I walked to Bedford Square? Should I think of Arabia or exotic birds; of Albatrosses, or of those great Condors who sleep on their outspread wings in the blue air ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith

... by the crew getting up the anchor: in a few minutes, the head of the 'fire-boat,' as my dusky neighbours termed it, was turned down the coast, and on we went, steaming, smoking, and splashing, after the most orthodox fashion of fire-boats in general. I had now time and opportunity to look around me. Every available spot of the deck and paddle-boxes of the small, flat-bottomed ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various

... Newburn and the iron and chemical works, the brick and tile works of Blaydon and past the famous yards of Elswick, down to the wharves and shipyards of North and South Shields, the Tyne rolls its swift dark waters through a scene of stirring activity; the air is dusky with soot and smoke, and reverberant with the clang of hammers and the pulsing beat of machinery. Some old and world-famed works have been closed or removed, like Hawks' and Stephenson's, but others, many others, have opened; and the map of the positions ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry

... Ossian had something to do with my morbid anxieties. I had read Byron's imitation of him before that, and admired it prodigiously, and when my father got me the book—as usual I did not know where or how he got it—not all the tall forms that moved before the eyes of haunted bards in the dusky vale of autumn could have kept me from it. There were certain outline illustrations in it, which were very good in the cold Flaxman manner, and helped largely to heighten the fascination of the poems for me. They did not supplant the pastorals of Pope in my affections, and they were ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... He never ventured back again to the Wednesday prayer-meeting, but he performed many attendances beyond the required minimum at the college chapel. Morning after morning he dragged himself from his bed and hurried across the dusky quadrangle to take his part in the mutilated matins with which the college authorities see fit to usher in the day. He even went to hear the sermons delivered on Friday afternoons, homilies so painful that the preachers themselves recognise an extraordinary merit in enduring them, and allow ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... misty than dark. A full and bright moon had arisen; but it pursued its path, through the heavens, behind a body of dusky clouds, that was much too dense for any borrowed rays to penetrate. Here and there, a straggling gleam appeared to find its way through a covering of vapour less dense than the rest, and fell upon ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... merely lighted up a portion of the wall against which it was fixed. Even in the immediate neighbourhood of the torch things were more or less indistinct, while all else was shrouded in darkness profound. Here more than a hundred dusky figures were assembled—those furthest from the light melting, as it were, into the darkness, and leaving the imagination to people illimitable space ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne

... knowledge or sanction, he had compiled and distributed among the audiences where she appeared an utterly preposterous biography of his employer." This, among other matters, asserted that she had "lived and danced for eleven years in China and Persia; and that she had been befriended by the dusky King of Nepaul, as well ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... fell on the garden. Only a bat flitted across it silently now and then, and the white night-moths came and played by us. I had my arm round her waist and I drew her close to me and looked down upon her through the dusky twilight. ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross

... amid the palms embowered That shade the Lion-land, Swart AFRICA in dusky aspect towered— The fetters on her hand! Backward she saw, from out her drear eclipse, The mighty Theban years, And the deep anguish of her mournful lips Interpreted ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... The slow, dusky colour rises in Saxham's set, pale face, and as slowly sinks out again. He has been standing in low-toned colloquy with the Chief outside the heavy plush curtains. He turns silently upon his heel and vanishes ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... and the great stone face, and, as might have been expected, every one of them wanted to know where the narrow passage led. But as Ralph was on hand to inform them that it was the entrance to Mrs. Horn's apartment, they could do no more than look along its dusky length, and perhaps wonder why Mrs. Horn should have selected a cave which must be dark, when there were others which ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton

... cypress trees of such a growth as in this spot—but then there are no other trees; inter viburna cypressi came of course into one's head: and this noble plant, rich in foliage, and bright, not dusky in colour, looked from its manner of growing like a ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... returns to me again—the lore I gladly had forgot comes like a ghost, And points with shadowy finger to the means Which best shall consummate my just design. The laboratory hath been closed too long; The door smiles welcome to me once again, The dusky latch invites my ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... rose out of the ruddy glare assumed the shape of a hearse bearing the arms of Austria. A few days afterwards my poor mother was removed to Saint Denis. Four or five days before the horrible death of our adorable Henrietta, the arrows of Saint Denis appeared to me in a dream covered in dusky flames, and amid them I saw the spectre of Death, holding in his hand the necklaces and bracelets of a young lady. The appalling death of my cousin followed close upon this presage. Henceforth, the view of Saint Denis spoils all these pleasant landscapes for me. At Versailles fewer objects confront ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... to peer up and down the dusky white street. He had a notion to run to a little store about a block away, when he saw a man walking hastily along on the opposite side of the street. Out into the middle of the street ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin

... larger and the hillside gradually flattened into a broad, tilted plateau. She gave her horse his head and breathed deeply of the pine-laden air as the animal swung in beside a tiny creek that flowed smooth and black through the dusky silence of the pines whose interlacing branches, high above, admitted the sunlight in irregular splashes of gold. There was little under-brush and the horse followed easily along the creek, where here and there, in the softer soil of damp places, the girl could see the hoof ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx

... where, after swaying about, and some balancing with her hands, she presently steadied herself, and stood, dazed and empty-eyed. Her cheek was cut, her ear was bleeding; her hair was down, the red handkerchief uncoiled; her dusky skin was stained with dirt and scratches, and her bosom heaved riotously as ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett

... upland, luxurious gardens, sweet shady grottos and cozy dells, orchards, forests, farms, with almost every variety of natural scenery, enliven the prospect beyond description; and last, though not least of all, a beautiful river pursues its serpentine course through dusky everglades and grass-grown valleys, as if an unearthed mine, fused by subterranean fires, were pouring forth its vast treasures in a stream of molten silver. The scene is so truly grand that neither tongue nor pen can do ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer

... him effectually. A sort of dusky red came to his face as he sat up and looked at me. He did not ask me what I meant: we understood each other in a moment. He only sighed heavily, and said, 'I have never told you anything, Ursula, have I?' but his manner testified no displeasure. He would ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... number. We passed under the stern of the English brig, and had a long pull ashore. I shall never forget the impression which our first landing on the beach of California made upon me. The sun had just gone down; it was getting dusky; the damp night-wind was beginning to blow, and the heavy swell of the Pacific was setting in, and breaking in loud and high "combers'' upon the beach. We lay on our oars in the swell, just outside of the surf, waiting for a good chance ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... top commanded the sunset. The dim landscape which had been brightening all day to the green of spring was now darkening to the gray of evening. The lesser hills, the farms, the brooks, the fields, orchards, and woods, made a dusky gulf before the great splendor of the west. As Ford looked at the clouds, it seemed to him that their imagery was all of war, their great uneven masses were marshalled into the semblance of a battle. There were columns charging and columns flying and standards floating,—tatters of the reflected ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... bas-relief of the Shaw Memorial became a living thing as the dusky heroes of the 15th cheered the Liberty statue and happily swarmed down the gangplank. Appropriately the arrival was on the birthday of the "revered Lincoln," and never was the young and martyred idealist of Massachusetts ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney

... would not so purchase The empire of Eternity. Hence—hence— Old Hunter of the earliest brutes! and ye,[ad] Who hunted fellow-creatures as if brutes! Once bloody mortals—and now bloodier idols, 30 If your priests lie not! And thou, ghastly Beldame! Dripping with dusky gore, and trampling on The carcasses of Inde—away! away! Where am I? Where the spectres? Where—No—that Is no false phantom: I should know it 'midst All that the dead dare gloomily raise up From their black gulf to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... Shade and Johnnie had passed its confines, the air from the mountains greeted them sweetly; the dusty white road gave place to springy leaf-mould, mixed with tiny, sharp stones. A young moon rode low in the west. The tank-a-tank of cowbells sounded from homing animals. Up in the dusky Gap, whip-poor-wills were beginning ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... dusky tide, Dark river, onward to the sea; And little doth thy current bide The thousand ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... fight anything that was fightable. He could save her life, but after this slight attention to her comfort he had reached the limitations set by his purely masculine training. He lowered the shades so that the room was dusky and as cool as any other place in that fire-tortured land, and felt that he could no ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower

... we all looked quite mouldy, when we emerged from our dusky dark caverns. But the weather was so delicious, so cool and refreshing; everything was so green and beautiful that we soon revived. I thought it necessary to take an inventory of all our possessions, that we ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton

... dusky brown of Achmet's face turned as black as the sudden dilation of the pupil of an eye deepens its hue, and he ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Ladies and gentlemen were strolling beneath the trees in the orchard, and along the garden paths. Pompey showing his white teeth, his dusky countenance beaming with pleasure, bowed very courteously ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin

... tacitly implied that it was not out of their thoughts; and however dear what we are going to leave may be, all that is not particularly dear must cease to interest us much. If those reflections blend themselves with our gayest thoughts, must not their hue grow more dusky when public misfortunes and disgraces cast a general shade?(458) The age, it is true, soon emerges out of every gloom, and wantons as before. But does not that levity imprint a still deeper melancholy on ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... in a thousand days or ten thousand days, but the one day it had happened had been the day he landed from the Nari for several hours' collecting. Especially had he been in quest of the famed jungle butterfly, a foot across from wing-tip to wing-tip, as velvet-dusky of lack of colour as was the gloom of the roof, of such lofty arboreal habits that it resorted only to the jungle roof and could be brought down only by a dose of shot. It was for this purpose that Sagawa had carried the ...
— The Red One • Jack London

... slopes, and full of interesting associations. It lies among 'fair meadows bathed in sunshine; with the Otter river winding through them ... yonder are the red Devon steers grazing up to their dewlaps in buttercups: beyond them dusky moors melt into purple haze.' By making a slight detour one passes the pleasant lawns and copses of Escot. Once the property of the Alfords, Escot was bought in 1680 by Sir Walter Yonge (father of George II's unpopular 'Secretary-at-War'), who built a new and ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... the doctor cut short the speech, but not before its import had come home to the young Italian, whose hollow cheeks flushed a dusky brown, while his sunken eyes caught fire. In an instant he was on his feet, with no attempt to hide his excitement, and still less to mask the emotion that was ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... take ye this for a sign. I bid thee now King Volsung, and these thy glorious sons, And thine earls and thy dukes of battle and all thy mighty ones, To come to the house of the Goth-kings as honoured guests and dear And abide the winter over; that the dusky days and drear May be glorious with thy presence, that all folk may praise my life, And the friends that my fame hath gotten; and that this my new-wed wife Thine eyes may make the merrier till she bear ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris

... hand. It is small and soft and white, and the one slippered foot might vie with Cinderella's. The clear, fine complexion, the abundant hair with rippling sheen that almost defies any correct color tint, and is chestnut, bronze, and dusky by turns, the sweet, dimpled mouth, the serene, unconscious youth, the truth and honor in the lustrous velvet eyes: she is not prepared to meet so powerful a rival. The Grandons have all underrated Violet St. Vincent. Floyd Grandon is not a man to kindle quickly, but there ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... excuse for retaining his name and personality among the pleasant memories of the past. But the other side of Milner's character, the power of "tenacious and inflexible resolution," of which Mr. Asquith spoke, was destined to be brought into play so prominently during the "eight dusky years" of his South African administration, that to the distant on-looker it came to be accepted as the characterising quality of the man. To some Milner became the "man of blood and iron"; determined, like Bismarck, to secure the unity ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold

... now really wild with anxiety, could only say: "Go, at once. Go somewhere, do something, to find them. See! It is getting dusky. Wherever they are, they are frightened, I know, and surely I am almost sick with ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks

... Elsie. And giving her babe to Aunt Chloe, she selected a key from a bright bunch lying in a little basket, held by a small dusky maid at her side, unlocked a closet door and looked over her medical store. "Here's a plaster for Uncle Mose to put on his back, and one for Lize's side," she said, handing each article in turn to ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley

... a certain poesy in his taste for the country. He liked to see a woman with a tall flexible figure glide through the dusky shrubberies of the park; only that woman must be dressed in white. He hated gowns of a dark color and had a horror of stout women. As for pregnant women, he had such an aversion for them that it was very seldom he invited one to his soirees or his ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... thus far, have been provided by the great Cook, and I fall to the charge of his head boatman, a dusky demon of energy. A slippery climb down the swaying ladder, a leap into the arms of two sturdy rowers, a stumble over the wet thwarts, and I find myself in the stern sheets of the boat. A young Dutchman follows with stolid suddenness. Two Italian gentlemen, weeping, refuse to descend more than half-way, ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke

... barrels of the dusky grain The secret of whose framing in an hour Of diabolic jollity and mirth Old ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... Feldpastoren, and would not quite suit sundry metropolitan charges one wots of. They do not wear gloves, nor are they addicted to scent on their pocket-handkerchiefs. Their boots are too often like boats, and when they are mounted there is frequently visible an interval of more or less dusky stocking between the boot-top and the trouser-leg. They slobber stertorously in the consumption of soup, and cut their meat with a square-elbowed energy of determination that might make one think that they had vanquished ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... his room. So they soon made a plan to take advantage of his absence. The chestnut laid itself down in the ash of a charcoal fire which had been burning on the hearth, the crab hid himself in a washing-pan nearly full of water, the wasp settled in a dusky corner, the millstone climbed on to the roof, and Momotaro ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore

... drawn, but a large window in the roof let in a square of cross daylight that looked like an island in a surrounding sea of dusky darkness; and in the light stood Joyselle, his back to her, his head bent over his violin in a way almost grotesque, as he groaned and tore at the hapless strings ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten

... moved upwards; the man began to blow on it; in the dim glimmer there appeared red lips, a hairy moustache, a straight nose, gleaming eyes that looked across the flame, a high narrow forehead, and the gleam of a jewel in a black cap. This glowing and dusky face appeared to hang in the air. Katharine shrank with despair and loathing: she had seen enough to know the man. She made a swift step towards it, her arm drawn back; but the glow of the box moved to one side, the ashes faded: there was already nothing before ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford

... together till the dusky night had begun to gather its shadows about us, and Mars, that marvellous spot of light from whose untouched continents the waves of magnetic oscillation might even then be starting on their pathless transit across the abyss ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... other matters than those they put before me, and while they desired there should be no mistake about their ancestors I became more and more lucid about themselves. I got away as soon as possible, and walked home through the great dusky, empty London—the best of all conditions for thought. By the time I reached my door my little article was practically composed— ready to be transferred on the morrow from the polished plate of fancy. ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James

... neither understood the world nor me. Were thy father of the Senate, or of the Council of Three, could the grievous fact be known, thou would'st have cause to sorrow. But, Gelsomina, the canals are getting dusky, and I must ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... enough, God knows.' In the evening, Mrs Chick and Miss Tox take to needlework again. In the evening also, Mr Towlinson goes out to take the air, accompanied by the housemaid, who has not yet tried her mourning bonnet. They are very tender to each other at dusky street-corners, and Towlinson has visions of leading an altered and blameless existence as a serious greengrocer in ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... I heard a noise as it Were of a rushing tempest, sweeping from the hills down into the valley; but on looking up, I could perceive nothing but the dusky desolation that brooded over the place. Still the noise continued; again I saw the coffin move; I then felt the motion communicated to myself, and found my body borne and swung backwards and forwards, precisely according to the motion of the coffin. I again attempted to utter a cry for assistance, ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... countries and fine clothes, books and paintings, and power apparently and the admiration of men . . . Isabel Hyde . . . Mrs. Lawrence Hyde . . . .smiling she tried his name under her breath . . .and suddenly she found herself standing before the mirror, examining her face in its dusky shallows and asking of it the question that has perplexed many a young girl as beautiful as she—"Am I pretty?" She pulled the pins out of her hair and ran a comb through it till it fell this way and that like an Indian veil, darkly burnished and sunset-shot with threads ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... his finger on the trigger when "my purpose," he says "was checked by MacLeay, who called to me that another party of blacks had made their appearance on the left bank of the river. Turning round, I observed four men at the top of their speed." These were the dusky delegates, and the description given by Sturt of the conduct of the man who saved ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc

... affectionate language of these dusky lovers; but it was noticeable that they did not sing, although, to have fulfilled the common idea of such an affair, they certainly should have been doing so, and each trying his best to outsing the other. Possibly there had already been ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey

... romance. When I was a boy there was more flavor in traderooms than in war. To have seen one would have been as a glimpse of the Holy Grail to a sworn knight. Those traderooms of my youthful imagination smelt of rum and gun-powder, and beside them were racks of rifles to repel the dusky figures coming ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... to mention it,—how, when the old negro died, his family had no place to bury him? The rest of his race, dying before him, had been gathered to the mother's bosom in distant places: long lines of dusky ancestors in Africa; a few descendants in America,—here and there a grave among New-England hills. Only one, a child of Mr. Williams's, had died in Timberville, and been placed in the old burying-ground over yonder. But that was now closed against interments. And as for purchasing a lot in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... below to look out charts and rulers and the other navigating implements necessary for simple point-to-point navigation. He found Natalie sitting in the main saloon with her chin in her cupped hand, gazing into the future. Her eyes grew dusky and her face flooded with color as he stopped by her chair and placed ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... Dusky shadows were gathering in the gloomy hall of the old tenement house, when Beryl opened the door of the comfortless attic room, where for many months she had struggled bravely to shield her mother from the wolf, that more than once snarled ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... fingers, and finally made an opening wide enough to admit his person. He crept boldly through, and looked around in the clear starlight. The sentinels were all slumbering at their posts. He advanced stealthily in the dusky streets. Not a watchman was going his rounds. Soldiers, burghers, children, women, exhausted by incessant fatigue, were all asleep. Not a footfall was heard; not a whisper broke the silence; it seemed a city of the dead. The soldier crept back through the crevice, and hastened to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... and exhalations that now rise From hill or streaming lake, dusky or gray, Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold, In honour to the world's great Author rise, Whether to deck with clouds the uncoloured sky, Or wet the thirsty earth with falling showers, Rising or falling still advance ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... co-operation and from contrast. Every step in the proceedings carried the mind either backward, through many troubled centuries, to the days when the foundations of our constitution were laid; or far away, over boundless seas and deserts, to dusky nations living under strange stars, worshipping strange gods, and writing strange characters from right to left. The High Court of Parliament was to sit, according to forms handed down from the days of the Plantagenets, on an Englishman accused of exercising tyranny over ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge

... a dog to his master's camel, Joseph was led away by the dusky merchants on their slow march to Egypt. They did not heed his cries and tears, for they bought and sold boys and girls, as other men bought and sold sheep and cattle, almost every ...
— Children of the Old Testament • Anonymous

... masters of poesy. One of his fellow-prisoners said that Lanier's flute "was an angel imprisoned with us to cheer and console us." To the few who are left to remember him at that time, the waves of the Chesapeake, with the sandy beach sweeping down to kiss the waters, and the far-off dusky pines, are still ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... their order—some red, some black, some white—and each carrying a lighted taper, traversed the plazas and paraded the streets the whole night. The glimmering light of the tapers falling upon these dusky shrouded forms in the gloom of this awful night, the melancholy refrain of the prayers which they chanted as they passed through the awestruck city, the lessening glimpses of the flickering tapers as the train passed solemnly by into some distant street,—all served rather to intensify than ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... thou dusky fount of life! God love thee for a merry sprite! Sing on! for though the sun be coy I sense with thee a budding joy, And all my heart with ranging rhyme Is ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various

... that wouldn't look nice in moving pictures," Blake went on with a laugh. "You did me a good turn," he said to Ramo a little later, as he shook hands with the dusky guide. "I ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton

... would say, pointing to a niche in the wall of the dusky aisle, "you see the bust of Don Jose Avellanos, 'Patriot and Statesman,' as the inscription says, 'Minister to Courts of England and Spain, etc., etc., died in the woods of Los Hatos worn out with his lifelong struggle for Right and Justice at ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... fire together. A shower of sparks flew up and cascaded in the still air of the summer night. A moment later his smiling eyes were peering through the thin veil of smoke at the two dusky figures beyond the fire. They were Indian figures, huddled down on their haunches, with their moccasined feet in dangerous proximity to the live cinders ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... was, and took his departure as quietly as he had come. Hans watched as the dusky figure flitted in and out among the trees and finally disappeared in the distance. Then, muttering to himself, he ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis

... the click-click of the attendant's sandals as he crosses the tiled floor with sherbet, coffee, or kalyan; but the interruption is brief. A few moments, and silence again reigns supreme—the perfection of rest, the acme of Dolce far niente. From here my way usually lay homewards, through the dusky twilight, past the city gates and along the now deserted plain. A limestone hill to the south of Shiraz bears an extraordinary resemblance to the head of a man in profile. Towards sunset the likeness was startling, and the nose, ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt

... the small prairie wolves, which either of the boys might have chased with a stick, but of a species known as the 'Great Dusky Wolf' ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes

... inconceivable velocity. It struck the people and beasts like the wing of a gigantic bird. In one moment the eyes and mouths of the riders were filled with sand. Clouds of dust hid the sky, hid the sun, and the earth became dusky. The men began to lose sight of one another and even the nearest camel appeared indistinctly as if in a fog. Not the rustle—for on the desert there are no trees—but the roar of the whirlwind drowned the calls of the guide and ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... an exchange of astonished and rather embarrassed looks all round. Caspar elevated his eyebrows and clutched his beard: Miss Brooke made a curious sound, something like a snort; and Maurice flushed a deep and dusky red; indications which all annoyed Lady Alice, although she did not quite know what they signified. She rose from her chair and took the matter into her own hands; but all without the slightest change in the manner of graceful indifference which ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... round limbs were made bright and strong by the constant bath and the temperate breeze. They were not cumbered with clothing; they wore no long, sweating gowns, but their smooth, shining skins reflected back their sun, which gave them such a rich and dusky charm. ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various

... longing. The enchanting image of the woodland queen, as he had beheld her in the dusky light of the charcoal-man's hut, was ever before him. He put his hands over his eyes. She was there still, with her deep, dark eyes and her enticing cherry lips. Even the odor of the honeysuckle arising from the garden assisted the reality of the vision, by recalling the ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet

... silence. It was past midnight, and the house was painfully still. They stood upon the dusky landing, across which a bar of light streamed from his half-open door, and only Beethoven's eyes were upon them. But Lancelot felt no impulse to fondle her; only just to lay his hand on her hair, ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill

... low, harsh laugh of hers that sounded in his ears afterward like the first muttering menace of the sand wind over the desert, the storm broke. Her eyes had an odd green glitter, her face was white, a dusky white, and her upper lip was drawn back from her teeth at ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... about the woods by the river's brink all day, and then, when evening fell and the grey twilight spread its dusky robe upon the waters, she stretched her arms out to the silent river that had known her sorrow and her joy. And the old river had taken her into its gentle arms, and had laid her weary head upon its bosom, and had ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome

... the fates were propitious, and Dick understood that the sceptre of favor was to be extended to him. When the girls had flitted into the little dusky hall he closed the door, and sat down happily bedside Mrs. Challoner, to whom he descanted eloquently of the beauties of Hilberry and ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... some incalculable distance, wailing over the dead that die before the dawn, awakened me as I slept in a boat moored to some familiar shore. The morning twilight even then was breaking; and, by the dusky revelations which it spread, I saw a girl adorned with a garland of white roses about her head for some great festival, running along the solitary strand with extremity of haste. Her running was the running ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... he sank back in the carriage and gave himself up to the most gloomy thoughts. The sorrow of parting from her took from him the joy of his escape. During the journey his dusky driver did not speak a word. The drive seemed a long one to Calhoun, and he was thoroughly wearied when the carriage drew up by a log house, surrounded by ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn

... Rheims. What, then, was my delight to see one morning placarded throughout the town the announcement of the Anglo-French play? A few days before the first representation I had witnessed a rehearsal, and as I was guided through the dusky labyrinths of the theatre I could realise the excessive, the appalling, combustibility of such buildings. It is difficult, moreover, for those who have never penetrated into such recesses—whose only acquaintance ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... Browning's chief delights in Florence. George William Curtis in describing the trip to Vallombrosa says that it was part of their pleasure to sit in the dusky convent chapel while Browning at the organ "chased a fugue of Master Hughes of Saxe Gotha, or dreamed out upon twilight keys a faint throbbing toccata of Galuppi's." Modeling in clay was even more satisfying as a personal resource. In the autumn of 1860 Mrs. Browning ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... flit down the dusky path, heard the click of the gate latch, and turned back into the office to wonder why it ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... is reared at the expense of two or more song-birds. For every one of these dusky little pedestrians there amid the grazing cattle there are two or more sparrows, or vireos, or warblers, the less. It is a big price to pay,—two larks for a bunting,—two sovereigns for a shilling; but Nature does not hesitate occasionally to contradict herself in just this way. ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... and solemn, like a succession of gigantic portals, with stupendous flanking obelisks and pyramids. Some of these crag-masses rival the fantastic cliffs of Capri, and all consist of that southern mountain limestone which changes from pale yellow to blue grey and dusky orange. A river roars precipitately through the pass, and the roadsides wave with many sorts of campanulas—a profusion of azure and purple bells upon the hard white stone. Of Roman remains there is still enough (in the way of Roman bridges ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... kept, yet, far away, Amid the forests' glade, The fair-hair'd warriors of the North Woo'd many a dusky maid, Who charm'd, perhaps, not less because ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... usually four- or five-sided immediately under the inflorescence. The general appearance of the stalk is round. The plant has few or no underground root-like stems. The flowers are densely clustered together to form spikelets, dusky brown in color, measuring 6 mm. by 3 mm. In the Visayas it is generally known as tikug. In Agusan and Surigao it is called "anahiwan" and in Bukidnon "sudsud". Sometimes it is called tayoc-tayoc in confusion with the smaller sedge more properly known by that name, which much resembles ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller

... the afternoon of the same day that Faith put in practice what she had been thinking of when she avowed her determination of further studying Mr. Linden. He had come home from school, and it was the dusky hour again; the pleasant interregnum between day and night when even busy folk take a little time to think and rest. Mr. Linden was indulging in both apparently; he was in one of those quiet times of doing nothing which Faith chose for making any ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... the dusky night Is fading from the sky; Awake! and with the early light To pleasant fields we'll hie. Come with me, and I will show Where the fragrant wild-flowers grow; We will weave a garland gay For our smiling ...
— Cousin Hatty's Hymns and Twilight Stories • Wm. Crosby And H.P. Nichols

... was again the most likely exotic, and played his revolting part with great gusto and a permissible amount of humour. Miss MARIE LOeHR, whose delicate grace of feature and colouring lost something by her dusky disguise, was sufficiently Japanese in the first scene, and did the right twittering with her feet; but when the virgin light-heartedness of Yo-San was changed to tragic despair she mislaid her Orientalism and reverted to her attractive English self. She brought a true pathos into the scene ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various



Words linked to "Dusky" :   dark-skinned, dusky-colored, dusky-footed woodrat, duskiness, brunet, swarthy, dusky shark, dusky salamander, swart, dusky-coloured, archaism, dark, twilit, archaicism, dusk, twilight, brunette, dusky-footed wood rat



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