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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



... 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 sprig of the same flower ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet

... premature or natural, accompanied with brown, or dark gray eyes, and a skin in which the brownish tints prevail, can wear all dark greens and olives, blue, browns, and dark amber, warm yellows and dark, dusky reds, yellowish-pinks, dark blues and purple, especially the brownish-purples, also cream-white. Gray or black is to be avoided. This range of color will, of course, be chosen from, in accordance with the age of the wearer. For jewels, reddish topaz, and amethyst are beautiful ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... 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 had fallen as harmless on Jo's ear-drum ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... especially true of the dusky duck, more generally known by the name black duck among hunters. He is indeed a wild duck, so wild that one must study him with a gun, and study him long before he knows much about him. An ordinary tramp with a field-glass and eyes wide open may give a rare, distant ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long

... Immortality" still his: a king of men. The practical intellects of the world did not much heed him, or carelessly reckoned him a metaphysical dreamer: but to the rising spirits of the young generation he had this dusky sublime character; and sat there as a kind of Magus, girt in mystery and enigma; his Dodona oak-grove (Mr. Gilman's house at Highgate) whispering strange things, ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... one to do the bouncing out and nabbing you, wasn't I? Well, now, I can't believe you were the more frightened of the two, for all that. Have this chair, please; it is the most comfortable. You see, I fancied Raquel had changed under my touch from dusky brown to angelic white. The hat hid your face, you know, until you turned around, ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan

... is a gloomy, ill-shaped little paved space, barely big enough to give fifty men standing room. Nothing can give any idea of the crookedness of it all, of the small dark corridors, the narrow winding steps, the dusky inclined ascents, paved with broad flagstones that echo the lightest tread, and that must have rung and roared like sea caves to the tramp of armed men. And so it was in the cities, too. In Rome, bits of the old strongholds survive still. There were more ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... looking out. For the last time she saw the Place grow dusky, and then flame out with gas—for the last time she watched the lighting of the beacon, and wondered how far on their way they would be ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill

... complete and accessible to all, so that this revelation imparts redemption and eternal happiness to all men, however different their capacities may be. Finally, it is assumed that not only men but all spiritual creatures, from the radiant spirits of heaven down to the dusky demons, have the capacity and need of redemption; while for the highest stage, the "spiritual Church", there is an eternal Gospel which is related to the written one as the latter is to the law. ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... 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 ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... Paris, Perez was received with great distinction and the most flattering attentions, being lodged in a spacious mansion, and provided with a military body-guard. The precaution was not superfluous. Wearing seemingly a charmed life, the dusky spectre of premature and unnatural death haunted him wherever he went or sojourned. Baron Pinilla, a Spaniard, was captured in Paris on the eve of his attempt to murder Perez, put to the torture, and executed on the Place de Greve—thus adding ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... 1712, Rebecca Gratz, her younger brothers and sister and the one guest she had invited to her eleventh birthday party, Matilda Hoffman, a girl about her own age, whose fair long braids formed a striking contrast to Rebecca's dusky curls. ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger

... and stared about, unable at the moment to comprehend my situation, I noticed, by evidence of the sun shining through the entrance of the hut, it was already past the noon hour. Consciousness becoming more acute, I perceived, standing barely within the shadows of the interior, the dusky figure of a warrior, unarmed, and motionless except for a gesture of the hand which seemed to command my following him. Retaining concealed within my doublet the sharp knife intrusted to me by Madame, I felt little trepidation at the ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... Unto the dusky borders of the grove Where gray-haired Saturn, silent as a stone, Sat in his grief alone, Or where young Venus, searching for her love, Walked through the clouds, I ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... behind him. The air that came with him was thick with tobacco smoke and heavy with liquor, and the one glimpse Michael got of the room showed a strange radiance of some peculiar light that glowed into the dusky ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill

... amazing and even irritating to her that the Duke of Christmas Daisies should be able to keep out of love for a moment: yet out of love his dusky grace still was: you could see it by the shamed looks of the Queen and court (though they pretended not to care), by the way darling ladies brought forward for his approval burst into tears as they were told to pass on, and by his ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie

... opening Buck turned and left the main street. Fifty yards along the side street he stopped the rickshaw and paid off the coolie, each taking his own kit-bag. Next Buck plunged into a dusky, ill-lighted alley, and ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore

... reluctantly it quits the plain before swerving aloft in that noble line! Velletri's ramparts, twenty miles distant, are firmly planted on its lower slope. Standing out against the sky, they can be seen at all hours of the day, whereas the dusky palace of Valmontone, midmost on the green plain and rock-like in its proportions, fades out ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... was drawing the batten blinds together. Her ivory-white arms gleamed in the sun. For a moment they could see her face shining like a star against the dusky glooms within; then the bolt was shot sharply to ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... an old acquaintance of Cyrus's, a dusky, lively woodsman, who spent a great part of the year in his lone bark hut, with his dog Tiger for company. He subsisted chiefly on what he brought down with his rifle, and sometimes earned three dollars a day for guiding tourists up Old Squaw or ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook

... missionaries translated my simple address to the dusky congregation, who listened with wondering awe to the ever-new story of Jesus. As the Lengua language contains no word for God, the Indians have adopted our English word, and both that name and Jesus came out in striking distinctness during the service, ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... He had cleared almost all the opponents' guards—there were but two more. These were exceptional runners of the Kaposias. As he approached them in his almost irresistible speed, every savage heart thumped louder in the Indian's dusky bosom. In another moment there would be a defeat for the Kaposias or a prolongation of the game. The two men, with a determined look approached their foe like two panthers prepared to spring; yet he neither ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... flight of vultures, that were sailing over the plain at no great distance, and apparently in the direction in which the Pawnee had riveted his eye. At first Middleton could not distinguish the small dark objects, that were dotting the dusky clouds, but as they came swiftly onward, first their forms, and then their heavy waving ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... brave, who bled While cheerly following where the mighty led— Who sleep beneath the undistinguish'd sod Where happier comrades in their triumph trod, To us bequeath—'tis all their fate allows— The sireless offspring and the lonely spouse: She on high Albyn's dusky hills may raise The tearful eye in melancholy gaze, Or view, while shadowy auguries disclose The Highland seer's anticipated woes, The bleeding phantom of each martial form Dim in the cloud, or darkling in the storm; While sad, she chants the solitary ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... we marched away to Bonneville and the next day reached Contay, where we climbed up to some unfloored huts in a wood. The weather on this march had been bitterly cold, but fine and sunny. A dusky screen of clouds drifted up from the west the evening of our arrival and the same night snow fell heavily. The cookers were not near the huts and neither stores nor proper fuel existed. There was the usual scramble for the few braziers our generous ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose

... drone of mouth-organs or Jews'-harps, which most of them carry strung about their necks, wherewith to banish dull care in the many moments of leisure snatched from toil, and beaming broad smiles on every dusky swain who passed. But the rumour got about that General Joubert had threatened to bombard the town indiscriminately if our guns fired lyddite at his batteries, and this threat had unknown terrors for the simple, ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse

... dusky face lighted up. That woman trembled all over under the sound of that man's tread. He was coming to her, there in the room, in which they had once been so happy; coming to her, perhaps in anger. That was nothing. Anger itself would be Heaven, compared to the cold politeness that ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens

... betimes, milkmen, the drivers of news-carts, dissipation going home jaded and pale, homeless wanderers, sentinels on their beats, and, in the country, labourers trudging afield, poachers slinking home, all over the dusky quickening country it could be seen—and out at sea by seamen watching for the day—a great white star, come suddenly into ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... sailor, and the bare boards served him better than bedding in which some dusky and dirty son of Ham had nestled. He laid himself ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... (he was afterwards pleased to say) he was conversing with W. H.'s forehead.' His appearance was different from what I had anticipated from seeing him before. At a distance, and in the dim light of the chapel, there was to me a strange wildness in his aspect, a dusky obscurity, and I thought him pitted with the small-pox. His complexion was at that time ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman

... the dusky chiefs, here and there, grouped together, and their fantastic tattooings showing like the carved work on quaint old chimney-stacks, seen from afar. But one of their number overtopped all the rest. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... motion over the sunlit reaches of the Hawkesbury. Not least interesting among such memories I count the recollection of a time when life was lived on a verandah, in the twilight of palm leaves, and its needs were served by dusky ministers whose footfall ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold

... round. There is now a general feast, and afterwards the youth of both sexes, gaily decked with the sal blossoms, the pale cream-white flowers of which make the most becoming of ornaments against their dusky skins and coal-black hair, proceed to the Akhara and ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... an eye upon the rascal, and you will soon find what I say is true. Let us hang these three miscreants, and all will go smooth." Suvaroff was not more complimentary. "How can that desk-worm, that night-owl, direct an army from his dusky nest, even if he had the sword of Scanderbeg?" ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... and rounded at the end; the side deeply sinuated behind; head pointed, antennae long; of a yellowish orange; antennae with a few greenish rings, cheek below the eye with a greenish line, head above with a longitudinal greenish line. Thorax with a slight keel down the middle, wrinkled behind of a dusky blueish green, a large patch of an orange colour on each side in front, and a small spot of the same colour on each edge of the produced part at base; elytra orange with numerous black spots, and black at the tip, lower wings pale orange at the base, clouded with ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... sound hollowly in the back rooms, and shafts of dusky light, preceded by hammerings and thumpings, began presently to band the inside of the house. Felicia stepped upon the painted floor of the bare hall, glanced up the narrow stairs, and then stood in the musty, half-lit emptiness of what she guessed ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price

... in a distant valley; then, in the early dawn, they followed their dusky guide to a little butte, where they made themselves as comfortable as possible to ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton

... She stared into the tarnished glass too hard indeed to be staring at her beauty alone. She readjusted the poise of her black, closely-feathered hat; retouched, beneath it, the thick fall of her dusky hair; kept her eyes, aslant, no less on her beautiful averted than on her beautiful presented oval. She was dressed altogether in black, which gave an even tone, by contrast, to her clear face and made her hair more harmoniously ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James

... a woman's ear Sad recollections of her perish'd lover, And sob and smile with veering sympathy, And, now and then, as if by accident, 305 Pass his mouth close enough to touch her cheek With timid lip, he takes the lover's place, He takes his place, for certain! Dusky rogue, Were it not sport to whimper with thy mistress, Then steal away and roll upon my grave, 310 Till thy sides shook with laughter? Blood! blood! blood! They want thy ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... or chin new-reaped would put his ears in such a compress? You will recall how Mr. Pickwick snatched his off when he found the lady in the curl papers in his room. His round face showed red with shame against the dusky bed-curtains, like the ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks

... stupendous and terrific effect. Tradition reports, that the awful chasm beneath was formerly the retreat of a gang of pirates, from which it derived its name. The total absence of vegetation, and the dusky hue of the soil, combined with the obvious appearance of constant decay, the dismembered fragments, and the streamlet to which it owes its origin, falling perpendicularly over a ledge of hard rock from above seventy feet high, producing a wild ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... The girl was a dusky young beauty, plump as a partridge, with the soft-eyed charm ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine

... in fact, bestowed upon her as a gift. Mrs. Cupp bought it for a shilling at a small shop in the village. Ameerah, in whose dusky being was incorporated the occult faith of lost centuries, and whose gods had been gods through mystic ages, received the fat, little brown book with down-dropped lids and grateful obeisance. These were her words ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... Hermia at last, but a beautiful Hermia,—a lovely apparition,—a woman indeed still, but "with something of an angel-light" playing in her dark eyes and round her dusky head. Always a distinguished-looking woman, if too cold for warmer praise, she is now at least ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown

... corners eyes strayed and ears were pricked up. Pinchas was indeed a figure of mark, with somebody else's frock-coat on his meagre person, his hair flowing like a dark cascade under a broad-brimmed dusky hat, and his sombre face aglow ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... stabbed him: suppose that he should lose her anyhow? Suppose that when she came to herself—the phrase was a confession! suppose she should want to leave him? It was an intolerable idea. "Well, she can't," he told himself, grimly, "she can't, now." His face was dusky with shame, yet when he said that, his lip loosened in a furtively exultant smile. Blair would have been less, or more, than a man if, at that moment, in spite of his shame, he had not exulted. "She's ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland

... between Bulawayo and Kimberley he had carried on negotiations which had finally culminated, five years previously, in his leading a column of 500 hardy pioneers to the promising country of Mashonaland, which up to that time had lain in darkness under the cruel rule of the dusky monarch. During three strenuous years Dr. Jameson, with no military or legal education, had laboured to establish the nucleus of a civilized government in that remote country; and during the first part of that period the nearest point ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... twilight Anne sauntered down to the Dryad's Bubble and saw Gilbert Blythe coming down through the dusky Haunted Wood. She had a sudden realization that Gilbert was a schoolboy no longer. And how manly he looked—the tall, frank-faced fellow, with the clear, straightforward eyes and the broad shoulders. Anne thought Gilbert was a very handsome lad, even though ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... wait your time, Beast, Till I write my last bad rhyme, Beast— Quit the sunlight, cut the rhyming, drop the glass— Follow after with the others, Where some dusky heathen smothers Us with marigolds in lieu of ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling

... animal, Darwin does not supply a pictorial representation thereof. The bird, which lives in South America, has a very loud and peculiar call, that can be heard at a distance of two or three miles. The female is dusky-green; but the adult male is a beautiful white, excepting the extraordinary structure with which we are at present concerned. This is a tube about three inches long, which rises from the base of the beak. It is jet black, and dotted over with small downy feathers. The tube is ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... 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 ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... coat, white trousers, and a cap with a tall feather, he looked upon himself as a most exalted personage, and for the whole of the first day remained on board, impatiently, but in vain prying into each boat that left the shore for the dusky forms of some of his quondam friends. His pride however could not long withstand the desire of display; yielding to the impulse of vanity, he, early the following morning, took his departure from the ship. Those who witnessed the meeting described it as cool on both sides, arising on ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... to-morrow, and I'll let you hear how I'll gull the saints of Auchtermuchty. In the meantime, there is a feast on the Sidlaw hills tonight, below the hill of Macbeth—Mount, Diabolus, and fly." Then, with loud croaking and crowing, the bridal of corbies again scaled the dusky air, and left Robin Ruthven in the middle ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... I see it praised and prized By all, from plowman unto peer; It's pencil-marked and memorized, It's loaned (and not returned, I fear); It's worn and torn and travel-tossed, And even dusky natives quote That classic that the world has lost, The ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... Juda's Land The dredded Infants hand, The rayes of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn; Nor all the gods beside, Longer dare abide, Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine: Our Babe to shew his Godhead true, Can in his swadling bands controul ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... at once. Slowly the warm blood flowed back into the dusky cheeks, the limbs began to twitch, the breathing grew audible, and the wounded man began to show signs of ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... falling when Quarrier set forth to keep his appointment with Eustace Glazzard at the Coach and Horses Inn. The road-lamps already glimmered; there would be no moon, but a soft dusky glow lingered over half the sky, and gave promise of a fair night. Denzil felt his boyhood revive as he got clear of the new houses, and began to recognize gates, trees, banks, and stiles; he could not say whether he enjoyed the sensation, but it served to combat certain ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing

... 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

... thy Image on our earth? For of the person much I fear, Since Heaven will claim its residence, as well as birth, And God himself has said, He shall not find it here. For this inferior world is but Heaven's dusky shade, By dark reverted rays from its reflection made; Whence the weak shapes wild and imperfect pass, Like sunbeams shot at too far distance from a glass; Which all the mimic forms express, Though in strange ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... nimbus of the smoke-wreaths round the brows, the gilding of the firelight on cheek and chin, and the rapt and far-off gazings of the eyes of both, why, but for the silver tinsel of the beard of one and the dusky elf-locks of the other, the ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley

... a crowd of huge, dusky clouds shut out the merry sunshine, and the Hamburgh mail brought no tidings whatever of Mr. Peter. Mr. Anthony worked himself up into a thorough ill-humour again, and swore at his clerks, because they asked him questions. When he entered his apartment that evening ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various

... the latter, when they were seated, and clinging with their little dusky arms round his legs, "are the very rummest little kids I ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... Pelle explained his plan. "Great God in heaven, if only we could get at him!" he whispered hoarsely, clenching his skinny fists which Death had already marked with its dusky shadows. "I would willingly give my miserable life to see the scoundrel ruined! Look at that!" He bent down, whispering, and showed Pelle a file ground to a point, which was fastened into a heavy handle. "If I hadn't the children, he would ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... is deckt With festive garlands, and the sunbeams glance From glossy evergreens; the mistletoe Pearl-studded, and the holly's lustrous bough Gleaming with coral fruitage; but we muse Of laurel blent with cypress. Gaze we down Yon crowded aisle? the mourner's dusky weeds Sadden the eye; and they who wear them not Have mourning in their hearts, or lavish tears Of sympathy on griefs too deeply lodged For man's weak ministry. A happy Christmas! Ah me! how many hearths are desolate! How many a vacant seat ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... neither moved nor changed its regular deep breathing, and La Mothe slipped past noiselessly, seeking anew for the promised signal. And midway to the well of the stairs, where faint murmurings told of sleepless life even in ill-lit, ill-guarded Amboise, he found it—a nebulous dusky cross, broader than long, stretching its shadowy arms upon the flags, and at his first low tap on the panel the door was softly opened and as softly closed ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... was fairly tall, but loosely built for an Italian, with slightly sloping shoulders. Alvina noticed the brown, slender Mediterranean hand, as he put his fingers to his lips. It was a hand such as she did not know, prehensile and tender and dusky. With an odd graceful slouch he went into the passage and reached for ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... made of cane juice, and at dances where such rum is served it is not infrequent for some one to become unduly excited. If he happened to meet another in the same condition and a controversy arose with reference to some dusky damsel, a frequent unfortunate outcome was, until lately, for both to draw revolvers and blaze away at each other and if ejected from the house to stand nearby and fire through the wooden walls. In Porto Rico such affairs are decided with the machete and only the immediate combatants are hurt, ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... our still dwelling-place wraps night's dusky mantle about her, Leaving the dead alone with the dead, to watch till the morning, Break not our rest, and seek not to lay death's mystery open. If now and then thou shouldst hear the string of a lute or a zithern, Mine is the hand, dear country, and mine is ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... then, as no further sound could be heard in the quiet house, he became restless. His pulses beat rather heavily and, to quiet them or the sense of them, he got up and walked about, pausing at one of the long French windows to gaze out into the dusky labyrinth of a garden, where he could just make out paths winding about among the bushes. The night was mild, and the window stood ajar as if some one had lately ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond

... torches—some resplendently flaring, some glittering gayly through colored glass—and bearing transparencies inscribed with trenchant sentiments. The houses of their adherents along the route were illuminated from attic to cellar with rows of candles, and the atmosphere wore a dusky glow of red and green fire. To Selma all this was entrancing. She revelled in it as an introduction to the more conspicuous life which she was about to lead. She showed herself a zealous and enthusiastic partisan, shrouding the ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... had been well chosen for a surprise landing. There was no moon, but after a little while the stars came out. Away on the port bow we could see the dusky outline of land, and once, when we were about half-way, an airship soared phantomlike out of the night, poised over us a short time, then ducked out of sight. At first the word ran along the line that it was a ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various

... up the violin and bow from the end of the counter. He leaned against the counter and tucked the violin under his chin. There was only a brown light in the dusky store, and the dust danced in the single band of sunlight that searched out a knot hole in the wall of the back room—the shed between the store proper and the ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long

... law was 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 In ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... bridges, and fording streams swollen by the fortnight's thaws and rains. Now and then the stillness resolved itself into the murmuring of bare sprays, the rustling of rain, the dancing of innumerable unfettered brooks glittering with motion, but without light, from the dusky depths; now and then a ghastly lustre shot from the ice still hanging like a glacier upon some upper steep, or a strange gleam from the sodden snow on their floors lightened the roofs of the leafless forests that overlapped the chasms, and trailed their twisted roots like shapes of living horror. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various

... dusky waves at night, Oft Mariners behold That ocean-form, St. Ermo's light, When ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 385, Saturday, August 15, 1829. • Various

... softly, floated the battalions of lanterns, so close to the water that they seemed flaming water-lilies, while the dusky mirror repeated ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet

... their ignorance are generally willing to trust to the pundits of the place,—look doubtful, uneasy, and bewildered. But they all do get properly placed and unplaced, so that the spectator at last acknowledges that over all this apparent chaos there is presiding a great genius of order. From dusky morn to dark night, and indeed almost throughout the night, the air is loaded with a succession of shrieks. The theory goes that each separate shriek,—if there can be any separation where the sound is so nearly continuous,—is a separate notice ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... light of the early sunset died in the gleaming quarries of the west window; Pierre Polou stumbled uncertainly through the dusky shadow, locked the sagging doors of the mouldering south porch, and took his way among the leaning crosses up to the highway and his little cottage, a good mile away,—the nearest house to the lonely Church of ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram

... (June 1767-June 1768), composing the second part of the Confessions, in a condition of extreme mental confusion. Dusky phantoms walked with him once more. He knew the gardener, the servants, the neighbours, all to be in the pay of Hume, and that he was watched day and night with a view to his destruction.[388] He entirely gave up either reading or writing, save a very small number of letters, and ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... here we now his corpus burn, And flames about him roar, The future Fresh shall say, that he's "Not dead, but gone before": We close around the dusky bier, And pall of sable hue, And silently we drop the tear; "[Greek: Pheu pheu, oi moi, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... in case of such an emergency, if she might sometimes apply to me for some of the articles of which they might be in especial need. From that time Canada became the ultimate destination of all my old clothes. I could imagine superannuated cloaks and shawls wrapped around dusky and shivering shoulders, and familiar bonnets walking about Canada in their old age on the woolly heads of poor ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Here on summer evenings the nightingales sang to the roses for which the gardens were famous; and for centuries the big white owls had hooted from their nests in the tree-tops, or flown, like pale ghosts, across the dusky paths. ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes

... whoe'er thou art! on death's pale coast Erelong I'll talk thee o'er with Dryden's ghost; The bard will smile. A last, a long farewell! Henceforth I hide me in my dusky cell; There wait the friendly stroke that sets me free, And think of immortality and thee— My strains are number'd by the tuneful Nine; Each maid presents her thanks, and ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... a white sail on a dusky sea. When half the horizon's clouded and half free, Fluttering between the dim wave and the sky Is hope's last gleam in ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... our heroine as she counted the days to the next rendezvous with Du Meresq; anticipation is ever sweeter than reality. The cottage was no longer dull, nor existence empty, even the unrenewed and diminishing snow, dusky as a goose in a manufacturing town, was the symptoms of approaching spring and verdure. Who need think of the torrents of rain which must precede it? The little episode with Jack outside the door afforded her secret entertainment, and although she did not look upon it as a bona-fide proposal, ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... the man could have seen the white, set face concealed among the draperies so near him—if he could have caught the deadly gleam that shone with tiger-like fury in Anna Goddard's dusky eyes—he never would have dared to face her again after giving ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... number of distinguished vegetable foreigners who lifted their heads out of parterres, of the very existence of which in winter one is scarcely conscious. The formal line of clipt Ilex that looks towards the sea, had changed its dusky hue for a warmer tint; statues that had been doing sentinel all the winter without relief, now seem to bend delighted over fragrant flower-beds, and enjoy the spring. Two high shrubs in flower (Metresiglias) hoist ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... I write these things of Marxism, carries me to the dusky largeness of a great meeting in Queen's Hall, and I see again the back of Mr. Hyndman's head moving quickly, as he receives and answers questions. It was really one of the strangest and most interesting ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells

... quite a fine fellow For the country he lived in—but, ah! His skin was a dull, dusky yellow, And his hair was as long as 'twould grow. ('Tis the fashion in China, ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates

... only when the satellite is waxing—al sottile detta luna, as they say. Altogether, the moon plays a considerable part in their lore, as might be expected in a country where she used to be worshipped under so many forms. The dusky markings on her surface are explained by saying that the moon used to be a woman and a baker of bread, her face gleaming with the reflection of the oven, but one day she annoyed her mother, who took up the brush they use for ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... 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 melodious ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... and slept that night beneath the shelter of a roof. Nothing worthy of mention occurred between this point and Aitkin, which we reached in four days, and at last found ourselves within the bounds of civilization, and bade farewell to our Indian guides. Captain Glazier tried to induce these dusky sons of the forest to accompany him to the Gulf, but the stories they had heard of the alligators and snakes of the Sunny South terrified them, and they refused. A short rest was taken at Aitkin, and ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... it will be wet under foot on schooners, and the house will leak; how well I know that! Here the showers only patter on the iron roof, and sometimes roar; and within, the lamp burns steady on the tafa-covered walls, with their dusky tartan patterns, and the book-shelves with their thin array of books; and no squall can rout my house or bring my heart into my mouth.—The well-pleased South ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... thought, as she looked at the picture, long and admiringly,—the picture of a patrician face with great dark eyes and a wealth of dusky hair. The old self-conscious, dissatisfied expression was gone. It was a happy face that smiled back at her. It had been nearly a year since Lloyd had had a letter from Eugenia. She had written from the school near Paris that her father was on his way over from ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston

... men enumerated, there were three more—who may properly be called the scouts of the party. One of these was a couple of hundred yards in advance, stealing his way along, as carefully as if pursued by an unrelenting foe, his whole soul occupied in watching for signs of the dusky red-men of the woods. At a somewhat less distance on either side of the road, and in such a position as to be opposite the wagon, was one of the remaining scouts, as watchful, vigilant and skillful as the one referred to. Thus the party progressed, neglecting no precaution that could make ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis

... it was Tim who finally found the blaze. He whistled—no answer. He whistled again—still no answer. He'd have to make a louder sound. It was growing dusky, and he did not want to become separated from Don for the night. He put ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger

... dusky morning, enveloped in fog, succeeded to the fine night. Before seven o'clock—so watchful and alert are boys when mischief is afloat—most of those who had been in the conspiracy were assembled, and waiting round the schoolroom doors. Generally, they could tear ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... occasion to call him, led the way in silence to a point of the eminence, without the buildings, where the eye might overlook the palisadoes that hedged the sides of the acclivity, and command a view beyond of all that the dusky ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... replied Miss Drummond, turning a dusky red, and looking annoyed at being discovered. "I do wish," she added, "that you would go round to your side of the room and leave me alone; I sha'n't have done what I want to do before Danesbury comes in to put ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade

... of relief as they watched him go, and for three days peace brooded over the winged fishers of those parts, so that birds could feed upon what they caught, nor be in fear of getting hunted for it. But upon the fourth day the skua came back. And he was not alone. A dusky, nearly brown—for they vary much in color—female skua came with him. And in due course they built them a home on the ground among the heather, and they guarded their treasured eggs and reared with amazing fierce devotion ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... tongues the mingled sounds were heard; In various garbs promiscuous throngs appeared; Thick as the bees that with the spring renew Their flow'ry toils, and sip the fragrant dew, When the winged colonies first tempt the sky, O'er dusky fields and shaded waters fly; Or, settling, seize the sweets the blossoms yield, And a low murmur runs along the field. Millions of suppliant crowds the shrine attend, And all degrees before the Goddess bend; The poor, the ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... direction, making room for others! In vain, you will have harassed your mind with cankering thoughts for half a lifetime; for it will be just as if you had gone through the confused mazes of a dream on the third watch! Sudden a crash (will be heard) like the fall of a spacious palace, and a dusky gloominess (will supervene) such as is caused by a lamp about to spend itself! Alas! a spell of happiness will be suddenly (dispelled by) adversity! Woe is man in the world! for his ultimate doom is difficult ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... river away to the eastward. They, too, swerved from their course; and, entering the Bayou of Plaquemine, Soon were lost in a maze of sluggish and devious waters, Which, like a network of steel, extended in every direction. Over their heads the towering and tenebrous boughs of the cypress Met in a dusky arch, and trailing mosses in mid-air Waved like banners that hang on the walls of ancient cathedrals. Deathlike the silence seemed, and unbroken, save by the herons Home to their roasts in the cedar-trees ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... could do. Now they bored me. Always the same apparent expression of strength, which goes back to the contrast between the dark pupil and the surrounding white, and in turn between this white and the dusky skin; always, even on the most indifferent occasions, this pregnant glance, this rolling and melting! "Anyhow," I asked myself one day, "why have all these people replaced their human eyes with the eyes of animals?" I began, when on the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... found himself once more in the mysterious grotto that glittered with jewel-like flowers. He noticed a fissure above the level of the water. The crab was probably there. He thrust in his hand as far as he was able, and groped about in that dusky aperture. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... place was exquisite still. Spring had passed over it with her magical touch, and she had decorated the spot she could no longer restore. The scent of box filled the air, and little new green leaves had put out on the dusky windings ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... just such little windows as would frame a fairy's head, looking out and laughing and nodding at you; whitewashed, half-timbered cottages, grouped together in a jumble of delicious curves and angles, with dusky, deep oak doorways, and stone steps hollowed by the feet that have gone in and out, and long leaded windows, softly yellow with lamplight in the mellow twilight of summer evenings, and gardens—oh, gardens ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland

... genius, he might have taken an unavailing refuge in flight or concealment. But, content with no safety unattended by affluence, he devised a surer plan: he became a householder. Now, a semi-detached villa is an impregnable stronghold. Respectability oozes from the dusky mortar of its bricks, and escapes in clouds of smoke from its soot-grimed chimneys. No policeman ever detects a desperate ruffian in a demure black-coated gentleman who day after day turns an iron gate upon its rusty hinge. And thus, wrapt in a cloak of suburban piety, Peace ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... feet, cheered, as they climbed slowly upwards on their laborious path, by delightful vistas of "golden atmospheres and rose-lit summits," such as broke upon the dreams of him who created in his fancy the Garden of Armida; upward and onward through the dusky shade, which in itself may well impress a quick imagination. It is the silence of the forest that makes its mystery. The only sounds are those of the branches swaying in the breeze, or of a bough crashing to the ground through decay, or the occasional ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... here," he cried, moved by some sudden, cautious instinct. He went into the dusky passage, and, after a few steps, discovered that a trap-door leading to a deep cellar had been left open. Had the children run along here their destruction would ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Red One • Jack London

... Rachael and Carol Breckenridge, who came in a little breathless, the throbbing engine of their motor car still sounding faintly from the direction of the club doorway. Carol, a slender, black-eyed, dusky-skinned girl of seventeen, took her place beside Miss Sartoris on the fender, granting a brief unsmiling nod to one or two friends, and eying the group between the loose locks of her smoky, cropped black hair with the inscrutable, almost brooding, expression that was her favorite affectation. ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... infinite pains, to accept quiet domesticity according to oldest and homeliest notions. These reflections detained him till the wood was embrowned with the coming night, and the shy little bird of this dusky time had begun to pour out all the intensity of his eloquence from a bush not ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... began to grow cool at last. The vivid pictures that had been passing so fast before his eyes faded. He saw only reality, the blazing fire, the dusky figures lying motionless before it, and the circling wall of dark ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler

... demesne in security for what he had borrowed. My father has them now, I mean," he corrected himself, "they're in my office. He said they were for me—he as good as gave them to me." Barty slowly turned a dusky red. He thought of what his father had said of Mount Music, of Christian; the arrogance, the hateful facetiousness; he had felt as if brutal hands had been laid on a saint; even now, he shuddered in spirit as ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... with Schinderhannes, who let him go no earlier than the opening of a December day, Patrick hied away to one of the dusky nooks by the lake for a bracing plunge. He attributed to his desire for it the strange deadness of the atmosphere, and his incapacity to get an idea out of anything he looked on: he had not a sensation of cold till the stinging element gripped him. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... read the brief report of that painful episode in that week's number of the Field in the school library. In the list of the Ripton team appeared the name R. Peteiro. He had heard a great deal about the dusky Riptonian when Drummond had beaten him in the Feather-Weights the year before. Drummond had returned from Aldershot on that occasion cheerful, but in an extremely battered condition. His appearance as he limped about the field on ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse

... bricklayer's big, opaque barytone; the others might be anybody over there—just Mexican voices. Then at the appointed, at the acute, moment, the soprano voice, like a fountain jet, shot up into the light. "HORCH! HORCH!" the old people whispered, both at once. How it leaped from among those dusky male voices! How it played in and about and around and over them, like a goldfish darting among creek minnows, like a yellow butterfly soaring above a swarm of dark ones. "Ah," said Mrs. Kohler softly, "the dear man; if he could hear ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... far up at the preacher, But she thought of the honey bees Droning away at the blossoms That whitened the cherry trees. She thought of a broken basket, Where, curled in a dusky heap, Three sleek, round puppies, with fringy ears ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... speaking of the cattle lost from the upland valley; she referred to those half-dozen big steers roaming on the Temple ranch whose brands had been crudely altered from the sign of the Big Bend outfit to the sign of her father's. Slowly the red blood of shame, shame for her, crept up into his cheeks, dusky ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory

... salmon to her hatch covers. There had been a fresh run. The trollers were averaging fifty fish to a man daily. MacRae put Vincent Ferrara aboard the Blackbird, himself took over the loaded vessel, and within the hour was clear of Squitty's dusky headlands, pointing a course straight down the middle of the Gulf. His man turned in to sleep. MacRae stood watch alone, listening to the ka-choof, ka-choof of the exhaust, the murmuring swash of calm water cleft by the Bluebird's ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... foremost boat, as Law could now clearly see, sat a slender young man, clad in the uniform, now soiled and faded, of a captain in the British army. His boat was propelled by four dusky paddlers, Indians of the East. Stalwart, powerful, silent, they sent the craft on down stream, their keen eyes glancing swiftly from one point to the other of the ever-changing panorama, yet finding nothing that would seem to warrant pause. Back of the ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough

... lads from the prairies and the mountains on other transports anchored in the deep but narrow harbor, yelled soldierly condolence to those condemned to stay. The steam of the 'scape pipe roared loudly and belched dense white clouds on high, swelling the uproar. Dusky little Kanaka boys, diving for nickels and paddling tireless about the ship, added their shrill cries to the clamor. The captain, in his natty uniform of blue and gold, stepped forth upon the bridge to take command, ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King

... no candle during that fearful night. She watched their dusky forms, as they flitted by, dimly seen through the trees, by the glaring blaze of the fire, that crackled up, throwing a flickering light upon the majestic forest trees that waved in solemn grandeur above their heads, and sighed mournfully ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna

... next summer, Switzerland! One day in our voyage we passed the Straits of Gibraltar—seeing land for the first time in twenty-eight days. We came so near and passed so rapidly, saw so distinctly the dusky gray olive foliage of Spain and the little round towers whence the old Spaniards looked for the Moors; and on the other side, so grim and lonely, the intricate mountain outline of Africa, so distinctly, and at night again, and for many days after, the same broad water; that it lies more dreamily ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... think, too, that I have no particular need of it. Do you ask me why I am so attached to the forest? It is because its scenery is so peculiarly picturesque, and affords me so much pastime when, in my floating white garments, I pass through its world of leaves and dusky shadows;—and when a sweet sunbeam glances down ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque

... in this loud stunning tide Of human care and crime, With whom the melodies abide Of th' everlasting chime; Who carry music in their heart Through dusky lane and wrangling mart, Plying their task with busier feet Because their secret ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle



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



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