We were quite out of earshot from the road, and it would be hard to imagine a more desolate place than it appeared, between two and three o'clock on that March night, the bare twigs of the birch-trees wriggling in the bleak wind, the faint light of the Decrescent moon, that seemed to be upside down in the sky, falling on the white rocks, and on the whitened branches torn down by the winter's storms, lying like bleached bones upon the ground before us.
"Paul Patoff"
F. Marion Crawford
And he, whom now his ominous halo's round, A three parts blank Decrescent sickle, crowned, Prodigious in catastrophe, could wear The realm of Darkness with its Prince's air; Assume in mien the resolute pretence To satiate an hungered confidence, Proved criminal by the sceptic seen to cower Beside the generous face of that frail flower.
"The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of George Meredith"
George Meredith