a. [f. STIR sb. and v. + -LESS.] Not stirring, motionless.
Frequent in Byron, Charlotte Brontë and P. J. Bailey.
1816. Byron, Pris. Chillon, ix. Silence, and a stirless breath Which neither was of life nor death. Ibid. (1819), Juan, II. cxliv. O’er him lay the calm and stirless air.
1824. Carlyle, in Froude, Life (1882), I. 214. I delight to see these old mountains lying in the clear sleep of twilight, stirless as death.
1833. L. Ritchie, Wand. Loire, 198. The river … in which the stirless trees on the banks were reflected.
1839–48. Bailey, Festus, i. 4. Ye who stand Stirless.
1849. C. Brontë, Shirley, xiii. She would spend a sunny afternoon in lying stirless on the turf.
1873. Le Fanu, Willing to Die, II. 119. The boat was now three lengths away; twenty—fifty; out on the bosom of the stirless water.
1896. Crockett, Grey Man, i. 2. The sparks fleeing upward as before a mighty wind, though it was a stirless night with a moon and stars floating serenely above.
Hence Stirlessly adv.; Stirlessness.
1825. Blackw. Mag., XVIII. 447. On their orbs the light Smote and sate stirlessly.
1858. Hampshire Advertiser, 7 Aug., Supp. 4/5. But the perfect stillness, the silence and stirlessness that prevail in church, testify that the congregation is at all events intently listening.
1888. W. Clark Russell, Death Ship, xxiv. The captain … held his place with the entranced stirlessness I was now accustomed to see in him.
