a. [f. VIEW sb. or v.]
1. That cannot be perceived by the eye; incapable of being seen; invisible. (Cf. SIGHTLESS a. 2.)
Originally and chiefly poet.; in the 19th cent. not unusual in prose, but frequently as a direct echo of quot. 1603.
1603. Shaks., Meas. for M., III. i. 124. To be imprison’d in the viewlesse windes.
1634. Milton, Comus, 92. But I hear the tread Of hatefull steps, I must be viewles now.
1651. Davenant, Gondibert, I. ii. 56. That viewless thing call’d Life.
1718. Pope, Odyss., VI. 25. Light as the viewless air, the warrior maid Glides through the valves.
1762. Sir W. Jones, Arcadia (1777), 105. This pipe, on which the god of shepherds play’d When love inflam’d him, and the viewless maid, Receive.
1794. Mrs. Piozzi, Synon., II. 328. Whence is heard the heavy roar of waters dashing through a bottom almost viewless.
c. 1810. Wordsw., Poems Nat. Indep. & Liberty, II. xxx. Gone are they, viewless as the buried dead.
1821. Scott, Pirate, vi. The air of majesty with which … she addressed the viewless spirit of the tempest.
1849. C. Brontë, Shirley, xxiii. The speed of the current in her veins was just then as swift as it was viewless.
1873. M. Arnold, Lit. & Dogma (1876), 389. We shall find ourselves more and more, as by irresistible viewless hands, caught and drawn towards the Christian revelation.
absol. 1831. Campbell, View from St. Leonards, 88. The imaginative power That links the viewless with the visible.
2. Devoid of a view or prospect.
1840. R. Bremner, Excurs. Denmark, etc., II. 350. Long and viewless, but with lofty, handsome houses on each side.
3. Having no views or opinions.
1885. Agnes Clerke, Pop. Hist. Astrom., 72. The turbid sense of groping and viewless ignorance.
1892. Pall Mall G., 4 May, 1/3. The passion-less, conscience-less, viewless creature of the Chronicle’s fancy portrait.
Hence Viewlessly adv., invisibly.
1828. Mrs. Hemans, Spanish Chapel, vi. For something viewlessly around Of solemn influence dwelt.
1842. Tait’s Mag., IX. 21. They rose higher and viewlessly in distance on either side.
1890. Lippincott’s Mag., May, 668. Viewlessly your whole being has become slowly interorbed with hers.
