Lantern

“ The mass of light shone verily like a lantern, and the present interpretation was somewhat reminiscent of a previous flickering lantern which we had seen, with its accompaniment of great magnified moving shadows on barn and hay-stack, as it assisted in the tardy chores of a whistling farmer lad.
But this light was of a greenish, ghostly hue, and perfectly motionless, and had withal a certain weird, uncanny glare, which belongs alone to fox-fire. It was impossible to locate its distance from us. It might as easily be one rod as five. ”

“ It was lighted in a moment, and we found it to be a powerful electric lamp. Then we too passed in, and the door closed upon us. If we were to be murdered, it would not be in utter darkness. The lantern was brilliant, and threw around its ghostly lights and shadows. We are compelled to repeat the adjective, for everything was ghostly and weird.
The vast interior was lost in profoundest silence and gloom. No single light could reach the depths and spaces, but round about us the lantern lighted up the outlines of aisles and arches and pillars. ”

“ Spindle-wood, spindle-wood, will you lend me, pray,
A little flaming lantern to guide me on my way?
The fairies all have vanished from the meadow and the glen
And I would fain go seeking till I find them once again.
Lend me now a lantern that I may bear a light
To find the hidden pathway in the darkness of the night. ”

“ The light of the lantern, striking among all these trunks and forked branches and twisted rope-ends of lianas, made the whole place, or all that you could see of it, a kind of a puzzle of turning shadows. They came to meet you, solid and quick like giants, and then spun off and vanished; they hove up over your head like clubs, and flew away into the night like birds. The floor of the bush glimmered with dead wood, the way the match-box used to shine after you had struck a lucifer. ”

“ His lantern when he did his chores
In winter after half-past three.
And many must have seen him make
His wild descent from there one night,
’Cross lots, ’cross walls, ’cross everything,
Describing rings of lantern light. ”

“ As it was getting dark, I lit and took with me the big red-silk lantern, and we set out, she leading, and walking confoundedly fast, slackening when I swore at her, and getting fast again: and she walks with a certain levity, flightiness, and liberated furore, very hard to describe, as though space were a luxury to be revelled in. ”

“ They are quite lovely, these nights, with the snow crisping under our feet, and Somebody carrying a swig-swagging lantern before us—everybody's shadow swaying tipsily about, and the sky so near and so thick with stars that it seems as if you had only to put up your hand to catch a whole cluster. ”

“ The tall, white towered light and its black lantern, now writhing in frosty northern blizzards, and again shivering in easterly gales, now glistening with ice from the tempest tossed seas all about it, and now varnished with wreaths of fog, is the only habitation worthy of the name for many miles around. ”

“ It flutters like a feather in the air, then it touches the water, squirms a moment, jumps about as if alive, unfolds, and instead of a long-stemmed flower, it is a young lady carrying a lantern, all dressed for an evening call. ”

“ At night, on your way to listen to music, take care to have a lantern for your return! Shod in white, be careful not to lose sight of either of your shoes; for fear that, having once confided the sole of your foot to an invisible path through the fog, an unknown road does not lead you hopelessly astray and the dawn find you entangled in the top of a flagstaff or clinging to the corner of a temple wall as a bat does upon the head of a chimera. ”

“ A lantern is brought out, and unconsciously and imperceptibly it becomes the centre of dark forms, relieved now and again by rows of beautiful white teeth as the owners indulge in a hearty laugh. At times conversation lags; some one drones a monotonous tune, others smoke in quiet contemplation, while others again follow the example of the dark human mounds scattered about the compound. ”

“ She could look up into the infinite vaults of the darkness, and her hope, her soul, no longer fainted within her. The lantern, like a tiny star, lucently white, with a rayonnant halo about its focus, showed vast, rugged, crag-shaped forms looming indistinctly in these undreamed-of subterranean realms, and now the path skirted an abyss of unimagined depth, and now toiled up an ascent, mountain-like in its vague immensity, but she had no tremors, no thought of regret for the bland outer air, and the bliss of the candid sunshine. ”

“ It is a great art that has been transmitted from father to son for ages. The making of lanterns is not merely artizan work. Great lanterns are not turned out as though they were stamped from a machine in a mill. There is much of mystery and romance in their manufacture. Some I will tell you, but more is a closed book, a locked book of which only those who are of the family of Yin have the key. The original lantern-makers were men of great prominence. Through the dark channels and streams of old China they sent their bright and cheerful lanterns, like great fireflies darting about in a garden. ”

“ Carrying the lantern so that its light should precede and guide his steps, he had barely gone twenty paces, when he discerned something white amid the dense gloom. Within but a few feet of the still encroaching water, a female figure was lying on a shelf of rock, from which she started into a half sitting posture, and gazed upward at him, with a wild and startled expression, in which hope and fear, joy and wonder, were singularly mingled. ”

“ Through the drizzling rain late that night the gleam of a lantern glanced among the stacks of wet planks, and behind it was a pair of eyes which were accustomed to look in the dark for all kinds of persons who might think fit to hide themselves in the yard. ”

“ But now there has come a new view of man's place in the scheme of time and space, a new illumination, dawn; the lantern rays fade in the growing brightness, and the lanterns that shone so brightly are becoming smoky and dim. To many men this is no more than a waning of the lanterns, and they call for new ones, or a trimming of the old. They blame the day for putting out these flares. And some go apart out of the glare of life into corners of obscurity, where the radiation of the lantern may still be faintly traced. ”

“ He fears not to tread the dreary path before him, because his lantern, which was kindled at the fireside of his home, will light him back to that same fireside again. And thus we, night-wanderers through a stormy and dismal world, if we bear the lamp of Faith, enkindled at a celestial fire, it will surely lead us home to that Heaven whence its radiance was borrowed. ”

“ Always circling, and always watching what was below by the light of the lantern, which was of extraordinary power for so small an instrument, we saw occasionally a curling trunk uplifted above the vegetation, as if its owner imagined that the strange light playing on the branches was some delicate prey that could be grasped, and sometimes a gliding form whose details escaped detection, when, upon passing over a relatively open place, like that where our adventure had occurred, a blood-curdling sight met our eyes. ”

“ LANTERN. To dream of carrying a lantern in a dark night is a good sign, provided you have no difficulty in finding your way, for it shows that you will easily accomplish some fortunate object you may have in view; if you stumble, or have difficulty in finding your way with the lantern, it denotes trouble and vexation, though success will be achieved at last. ”

“ In the thick gloom around him his lantern's gleam of light showed him a kind of vaulted wall of massive masonry. He advanced a step or two with noiseless tread, listening, on the alert. Not a sound could he hear: he decided to expose the full light of his lantern. ”

“ Because in the centre of the earth there is neither sun nor moon, the people have to be continually burning lights; and so many and so great were the lanterns of Lantern Land that the town was as bright as day. The edge of the harbor was marked with a row of golden lanterns; there were immense lanterns at every six paces along the streets; a lantern hung from every house ”

“ You who presume to move this way,
Get a good lantern, lest you stray.
We took special care of that, cried Pantagruel when he had read them; for there is not a better or a more divine lantern than ours in all Lantern-land. ”

“ Edging round the narrow pathway in their struggle, they gradually came under the influence of the wind sweeping round the lantern, when suddenly one of them would be wheeled off its feet away into the darkness, its opponent peering after it in evident astonishment, and probably congratulating itself on its prowess. ”

“ A low fire burned in the chimney. We stirred it and lighted the lantern. Footprints not our own had dried white upon the smooth dark floor.
They pointed to the fireplace and out again. They had been made by a woman's feet.
We descended the hill to the river, and tossed our light through every bush, the lantern blinking in the wind. We explored the ravine, the light stealing over white birches that glistened like alabaster. It was no use to call her name. ”

“ The night is dying. Her rich darks and whites grow pallid. Each moment a layer of darkness peels off. The sky turns blue before one knows it: the rocks grow brown: there is blue in the crevasses, and green upon the swards—all low-toned yet distinct. Faint puffs of warm air come, we know not whence, touch our faces, and are gone. The lantern has been extinguished; we stride out more freely; the day awakens within us also. ”

“ I realized now that my companion and I should have brought the lantern with us to the scow. It would have given us an advantage in enabling us to see what we were doing and what lay beyond our arm’s reach.
I wondered, in a scattered, uneasy way, at the now total absence of the moon. There was something ominous in the depth and silence of the [124] darkness that engulfed us. ”

“ You wise men of the West gloat in your imagined knowledge, but some of the greatest facts of earth are still closed books to you. A lantern is as important as the path down which we walk. What good is the path without the light of a lantern to show us the way? ”

“ The sudden flashes emitted by my lantern have no power to distract her from her task. She continues to turn in the light even as she turned in the dark, neither faster nor slower. This is a good omen for the experiment which I have in view. ”

“ Happier my lot, who will straightway hie me to my familiar room and toast myself comfortably before the fire, musing and fitfully dozing and fancying a strangeness in such sights as all may see. But first let me gaze at this solitary figure who comes hitherward with a tin lantern which throws the circular pattern of its punched holes on the ground about him. He passes fearlessly into the unknown gloom, whither I will not follow him. ”

“ On a dark night and in a dangerous place, where the footing is insecure, a lantern in the hand is worth a dozen stars. It is well to look beyond the present into the future, and in the season of strength and prosperity, to make provision for a time when misfortune and old age may overtake us. ”

“ Then came the lantern. The lantern is a puzzle, because a bonfire and delicate scientific instruments appear to have shared its narrow area. Visitors speak, for instance, of a mysterious "mirror" up there, which was even more wonderful than the building itself. ”

“ Each drum has the tomoye painted on its ends. Then there were hundreds of paper lanterns carried on long poles of various lengths round a central lantern, 20 feet high, itself an oblong 6 feet long, with a front and wings, and all kinds of mythical and mystical creatures painted in bright colours upon it—a transparency rather than a lantern, in fact. ”

“ Although our little lantern maintains its light we seem to see here less and less: the darkness around us in these vast rooms becomes almost overpowering—and these are the rooms, too, that, leading one into the other, facilitate the midnight promenade of those dread “forms” which, every evening, are released and roam about. ”

“ Who wants to go prowling around these hills by night, with a lantern that smokes and has an evil smell, losing sleep and yowling like a bunch of coyotes, hunting a misguided young woman who thinks north is south, and can't point straight up? ”

“ A bi-unial lantern consists essentially of two different instruments, each complete with its limelight jet or other illuminant—front, condensers, objective, &c., usually mounted on one body—and with some arrangement for 'dissolving' or turning the light in each lantern gradually on and off. ”

“ The man with the lantern, if there was a man and a lantern, seemed to be moving with the wind. Then, again, he seemed to divide himself, as the lower orders of life at the bottom 55 of the seas divide themselves, appearing on both sides of a dark space at the same moment. ”

“ During this time the moon became covered with clouds, and a black fog rose over the sea. It was just possible to distinguish in the darkness a lantern on the mast of a ship at anchor, close to the shore. The waves were rolling in, and threatened, if he continued to advance, to swallow up my blind adventurer. ”

“ Better have a lantern, too, though.”
“Think so?”
He took down a little dark lantern, lighted it, tested it, and put it in his pocket.
“Now I’m ready. Have we far to go?”
“Oh, no; just across the street.” ”