Etymology From Middle English derkelyng. By surface analysis, dark + -ling.
1
In the dark; in obscurity.
So, out went the candle, and we were left darkling.c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iv]:
As the wakeful bird sings darkling.1667, John Milton, “Book III”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC:
1 more example
I had a dream, which was not all a dream. / The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars / Did wander darkling in the eternal space, / Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth / Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;1816, Lord Byron, Darkness:
darkling
adj
Etymology Coined by Irish poet Mary Tighe in 1805, likely as an extension of the adverbial sense, and popularized by John Keats.
She still pursued its flight, with all the speed / Her fainting strength had hitherto supplied: / What pathless wilds she crossed ! What forests darkling wide !1805, Mary Tighe, Canto III, in Psyche, or the legend of love, Stanza 13, line 9:
May thine autumn calm, serene, / Never want some lingering flower, / Which Affection's hand may glean, / Though the darkling mists may lower !1812, Mary Tighe, Written for her niece S.K., in B. George Ulizio, editor, Psyche: with other poems, Stanza 4:
3 more examples
And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night1867, Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach::
The air is cool and it’s darkling, / And calmly flows the Rhine; / The mountain tops are sparkling / In sunset’s parting shrine.1876, Heinrich Heine, translated by Thomas Selby Egan, Atta Troll and Other Poems, London: Chapman and Hall, […], page 165:
To us and to an observer about Ripley it would have had precisely the same effect the Martians seemed in solitary possession of the darkling night, lit only as it was by the slender moon, the stars, the after-glow of the daylight[.]1898, H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, London: William Heinemann, page 140:
2
Figuratively Obscure; taking place unseen, as if in the dark.
darkling
noun
Etymology From darkle + -ing, darkle itself a backformation from Tighe's adjectival sense.
She carried some rugs for me through the shrubbery in the darkling. "They'll think we've gone mooning," she said, jerking her head at the household. "I wonder what they make of us – criminals."1909, H.G. Wells, Chapter the First: The Stick of the Rocket, in Tono-Bungay, Book the Fourth: The Aftermath of Tono-Bungay:
darkling
noun
Etymology From dark + -ling.
1
Obsolete A child of darkness; someone dark by nature or who has grown dark in character.