"Expanse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I shall have something to say about Mount Sinai, and I hope to place you in a position to see it in the distance; but at present we are not prepared to consider the matter. You can now see through the cutting an expanse of water, which is the great basin, as the ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... I travell'd in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been, Which bards, in fealty to Apollo, hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold; Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... could be more horrible and dreary, exhibiting the very "palpable obscure," than our course of to-day. As far as the eye can stretch on every side is one vast, solitary, lifeless, treeless expanse of desert earth! ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... stared at us as we rushed by. As we drew near Rome, the scenery grew lonelier yet; the land rose into desolate, sterile, stony heights, without a patch of verdure on their nakedness, and at last abruptly dropped into the gloomy expanse of the Campagna. ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... most of their pink. The blade is oblong and rounded at the end, at first cupped and then nearly flat, three-fourths of an inch long, narrowed at the base into a short stem-like part and usually hairy there, the edges perhaps wavy but entire. The expanse of the flower may be one and one-half to two inches. The brush of stamens, erect in the center, sheds its pollen and the ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... looked like a wizened monkey as he screwed up his eyes and chuckled. He was in a good temper this morning—good for him—and he looked well pleased as his eye traveled slowly over the wonderful expanse of garden which lay spread out like a ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... there, with its white sands and massive rocks, its still expanse of water, and its background of mountain peaks palely covered by the yellow moonlight, seemed really a home for a magic princess who was shut off from all the world. But here, in front of them, was another sort of sea, and another ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... compared with its predecessor, covers a brief expanse of time. The use of metals came in not much before the dawn of history. The earliest civilized peoples, the Babylonians and Egyptians, when we first become acquainted with them, appear to be passing from the use of stone implements to ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... day before the dawn we were lying-to upon the Oakland side of San Francisco Bay. The day was breaking as we crossed the ferry; the fog was rising over the citied hills of San Francisco; the day was perfect—not a ripple, scarce a stain, upon its blue expanse; everything was waiting, breathless, for the sun. A spot of cloudy gold lit first upon the head of Tamalpais, and then widened downward on its shapely shoulder; the air seemed to awaken and began to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to be provided on the following evening, under the trees which overshadowed the expanse in front of my house, and the whole town to be invited. The mysterious virtue of my purse, the exertions of Bendel, and the dexterous contrivances of Rascal, succeeded in doing wonders in the trifling space of time. It is really astonishing how richly and beautifully everything ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... loiter along tree-shaded alleys, or stroll through rhododendron dells in the late Spring, when the landscape fairly quivers with color, there is an ineffable loveliness about Golden Gate Park. Its opulence is heightened by its contrasts, as are all well-considered landscape designs. Treading the expanse of daisy-starred emerald lawns, loitering under the elms in the Band Concourse, or wandering through the dwarf trees patterned against humpback bridges in the Japanese Tea Garden, you find new lures in Golden Gate Park with each ...
— Fascinating San Francisco • Fred Brandt and Andrew Y. Wood
... short rest in the shade the little party headed for the beach. As they came in sight of it from a small hill, the boys uttered exclamations of delight, for a beautiful expanse of water was stretched out before them,— the Pacific ocean sparkling blue ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... staircase) at the calculation we made, how much longer you and I, if we continued to thrive as we had thriven latterly, should be able to pass within its narrow circle. Although I like this little villa much better, I would gladly see the place again, and enjoy with you, as we did before, the vast expanse of woodlands and mountains and maremma; frowning fortresses inexpugnable; and others more prodigious for their ruins; then below them, lordly abbeys, overcanopied with stately trees and girded with rich luxuriance; and towns that seem approaching them to do ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... the advent of Roger and his cousin the conversation became general for a few minutes, then Lady Gertrude drew her son towards a French window opening on to the garden—a garden immaculately laid out, with flower-beds breaking the expanse of lawn at just the correct intervals—and eventually she and Roger passed out of the room to discuss with immense seriousness the shortcomings of the gardener as exemplified in the shape of one of ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... as they wander over a large expanse of barren mountain land, is dismal indeed, and well might become ominous of storms and disasters. The big fat sheep, which are penned in the lowlands of England, with a tinkling bell strapped to the neck of the king of the flock, convey a ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... it could repose in safety. Hence has arisen the demand, [Greek: pou stoi], which has been repeated for ages. It is my hope, and my presumption, that such a place of appulse may be found, where we may take our stand, and from whence we may have a full view of the mighty expanse before us; from whence also we may descry the original design, and order, of all those objects, which by length of time, and their own remoteness, have been rendered so ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... familiar cashew trees, which had yielded for me so bountifully of their crops of blossoms and hummingbirds, of fruit and of tanagers, and looked out toward the distant jungle, which trembled through the expanse of palpitating heat-waves; and I knew how a hermit crab feels when its home pinches, or is out of gear with the world. And, too, Nupee was dead, and the jungle to the south seemed to call less strongly. So I wandered through the old house for the last time, sniffing the agreeable odor of aged hypo ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... gulley they had crossed was the only solid land in sight, and because of the trees and palmetto scrub they could not tell how far this ran in either direction. Behind them was the river of mud through which they had wallowed. Before them lay the apparently limitless expanse of the same formation, dotted sparsely with clumps of grass and flowers and at rare intervals with tiny mangrove islands. No signs of animal life were apparent. Even the birds were absent. There were only the buzzards overhead—waiting, ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... climbing steadily, until I was again at five thousand feet. As before, my motor was running perfectly and I had plenty of leisure to enjoy the always new sensation of flight and to watch the wide expanse of magnificent country as it moved slowly past. I let my mind lie fallow, and every now and then I would find it hauling out fragments of old memories which I had ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... before long only about a quarter of a mile separated the two. At this point the undetermined cause which had produced this change ceased, and the party rowed homeward with their last load, just in time as the pack closed in, and the channel through which they had rowed, in the morning, over a glassy expanse of nearly a mile in width, narrowed, until, with a shock which was wholly unexpected, so gradual and gentle seemed the motion, the opposing borders were again united, and the waves of the sea were ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... servant was stately, in that they were the two people who linked most intimately Great and Greater Britain. To them Oceana was a living, sentient thing, not merely a glorious name and expanse. It had squalled in their ears. They could go back to the beginnings, could witness the whole panorama of the Colonies unroll itself. They stood for the history of a high endeavour, which had been nobly crowned. Oft, there had been weary clouds across the sky, not seldom heavy darkness. ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... life. Below the half-raised blind in the window the canaries in their cage rustled and bickered; unwashed plates were crowded on the table; the big unmade bed added a flavor of its own to the atmosphere. Madame eased herself, panting, into the chair before the desk, revealing the great rounded expanse of her back with its row of straining buttons and lozenge-shaped revelations of underwear. With the businesslike deliberation of a person who transacts a serious affair with due seriousness, she spread the bill before her, smoothing it out with a practiced ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... should assist in the capture of the runaway. They rowed close under the side of the black and wicked-looking vessel, and then Mr. Carter, standing up in the boat gave a "Yo-ho! aboard there!" that resounded over the great expanse ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... CODLING MOTH, the most insidious of all apple pests, is mainly responsible for wormy apples. The adult is a night flying moth with a wing expanse of from one-half to three-quarters of an inch. The moths appear about the time the apple trees are in bloom. Each female is supposed to lay about fifty eggs which are deposited on both the leaves and fruit, but mostly on the calyx ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... commencement of the action been used to convey Lieutenant-Commander Nicolas and Mr. Dillet, under the charge of Surgeon Bradshaw, to the ship, one only remained for the men to embark in. The tide having fallen, this was lying out near the entrance of the creek, separated by an expanse of reeking mud from the shore. The men, seeing their last chance of safety cut off, threw themselves into the mud, in which many sank and were no more seen. Some few, however, succeeded in floundering along, half wading and half swimming, until ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... reigns Dread through the dun expanse; save the dull sound That from the mountain, previous to the storm, Rolls o'er the muttering earth, disturbs the flood, And shakes the forest leaf without a breath. Prone to the lowest vale, the aerial tribes Descend: the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... is, was the "demon," or the actual expanse of sky, first in evolution? That cannot precisely be settled, but in the analogous Chinese case of China we find heaven (Tien) and "Shang-ti, the personal ruling Deity," corresponding to the Huron "demon". Shang-ti, the personal ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... 800,000 square miles in extent,—as large as the German Empire, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Holland combined. Those who led in the secession movement relied confidently upon the impossibility of overcoming a population inhabiting so great an expanse of territory. Their judgment was confirmed by that of the best military critics of Europe who looked pityingly upon the folly of the United States for undertaking a task which after years of suffering and great loss of life could end only in defeat, with hopeless bankruptcy for the surviving ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... cease leading my camel till I was out of the thicket, when I remounted; but at a loss which way to go, and unknowing where Providence might direct me, I reached the desert, and cast my eyes over the expanse; when, lo! at length a smoke appeared in the midst of it. I whipped my camel, and at length reached a fire, and near it observed a handsome tent, before which was a standard planted, surrounded by spears, horses picketted, and camels grazing. I said to myself, "What can mean this tent, which ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... boundless expanse of grass-covered pasturage lands, its thousands of head of cattle and horses, its thousands of acres of bean lands, ready for seed, is ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... district of Kau is a rich, luxuriant spot, surrounded by desolate fields of scoriae, which renders it difficult of access. We are situated six miles from the sea, sufficiently elevated to give us a commanding view of its vast expanse of waters. We can occasionally spy a sail floating like a speck on its surface. From the shore, the country gradually rises into a range of verdant mountains, whose summits appear to touch the clouds. ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... him for miles—as far as he could see in fact—stretched a gently-heaving, brown expanse. It looked like a vast prairie. From it rose the sharp, pungent odor peculiar to seaweed and the old mariner had no difficulty in recognizing the stunning fact that he was adrift in the Sargasso Sea of which he had heard so many ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... conducting Margaret. Here prevailed also the same studied simplicity. The seats were for sixteen. The table went to the extremity of elegant plainness, no crowding, no confusion of colors under the soft lights; if there was ostentation anywhere, it was in the dazzling fineness of the expanse of table-linen, not in the few rare flowers, or the crystal, or the plate, which was of solid gold, simply modest. The eye is pleased by this chastity—pure whiteness, the glow of yellow, the slight touch of sensuous warmth in the rose. The dinner was in keeping, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... within their reach than the pathetick; for they never attempted that comprehension and expanse of thought which, at once, fills the whole mind, and of which, the first effect is sudden astonishment, and the second, rational admiration. Sublimity is produced by aggregation, and littleness by dispersion. Great thoughts are always general, and consist in positions ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... steel-bright against its spotless level—the two outer ones being those employed by the local trains going to and fro between London and the suburbs, the two inner ones belonging to the main line—but not one footstep indented the thin surface of that broad expanse of snow from one end of the journey ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... little yellow flowers growing in the grass at the roadside, and plumped down then and there inconsequently to gather them. By that time Jane was out of sight; and at the moment Beth became aware of the fact, she also perceived an appalling expanse of bright blue sky above her, and sat, gazing upwards, paralysed with terror. This was her first experience of loneliness, her first terrified ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... from reading Robinson Crusoe. To this I may add the height and romantic outline of its mountains, the beauty and freshness of its verdure and the extreme fertility of its soil, and its solitary position in the midst of the wide expanse of the South Pacific, as all concurring to ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... Again the stars Shine on me with their myriad eyes. So long I've peered 'twixt iron bars, I'm awed by this expanse of skies. The world is wider than I thought, And yet 'tis not so wide, I know, But into its remotest spot My tale ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... hearing is dulled, and the light is almost shut out from the "windows of his soul." Let us think of this remarkable man waiting for death uncomplainingly in his old-fashioned mansion, surrounded by the beautiful foliage and the broad expanse of green fields that he loved so much to roam when a younger man, in that sylvan Sleepy Hollow in the Vale ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... thou bright queen, who o'er th' expanse Now highest reign'st, with boundless sway! Oft has thy silent-marking glance Observ'd us, fondly-wand'ring, stray! The time, unheeded, sped away, While love's luxurious pulse beat high, Beneath thy silver-gleaming ray, To mark the ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... beautiful death of winter now however,—through which the Newtown railroad, like the Star of Empire, westward takes its way. For the village of Wheathedge, scattered along the mountain side, looks down from its elevated situation on a wide expanse of country. Like Jerusalem of old,—only, if I can judge anything from the accounts of Palestinian travelers, a good deal more so,—it is beautiful for situation, and deserves to be the joy of the ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... the very midst of the reeds. A halt for a couple of days was made, whilst Sturt prepared his despatches to the Governor. On the 26th, the two messengers were sent off to Bathurst, and the progress of the party was resumed. Before the day closed, they found themselves on a dreary expanse of flats and of desolate reed beds. The progress of the main body was thus suddenly and completely checked, and Sturt decided to launch the boat and with two men endeavour to trace the course of the river, while Hume and ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... of the entire road. There are no houses about; the city not having grown that far out and the soil being entirely unsuitable for farming. In fact, there are only one or two large trees near by, to break the desolate expanse, the vegetation consisting mostly of thorny bushes springing from the rocky soil. There have been several accidents at the bridge, for its narrowness is deceiving and it is impossible for two autos to pass. Motorists, going to ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... perception of just this—the ceaseless push of event following on event, the ceaseless push of the yet unborn struggling to force the doors of life—which moved Katherine to seriousness, as she stood alone on the smooth expanse of the troco-ground, in the soft, all-covering twilight, at the close of ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... sun went down that day in a marvellous manner. Its immense shield had sunk half-way behind the Janiculum, the whole expanse of heaven was filled with a red gleam. From the place on which they were standing, Peter's glance embraced large expanses. Somewhat to the right they saw the long extending walls of the Circus Maximus; above it the towering palaces of the ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... exploit the anomaly, treat it perhaps as romantic or possibly even as comic?—show at least that they needn't mind even though the vast table, draped in brown holland, thrust itself between them as an expanse of desert sand. She couldn't cross the desert, but she could, and did, beautifully get round it; so that for him to convert it into an obstacle he would have had to cause himself, as in some childish game or unbecoming romp, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... necessity! thou dost compel by thy law, and by the most direct path, every effect to proceed from its cause. These things are verily miracles! I wrote in my Anatomy how in so small a space the visual faculty can be reproduced and formed again in its whole expanse. ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... in the earlier stages of nautical development. A broken, indented coast means not only a longer and broader zone of contact between the inhabitants and the sea; it means also the breaking up of the adjacent expanse of water into so many alcoves, in which fisherman, trader and colonist may become at home, and prepare for maritime ventures farther afield. The enclosed or marginal sea tempts earlier because it ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... breathless. We took her hands, Louis and I, and I feared she would never speak again. Tearful and motionless these beloved ones sat about her, and at last, when the crimson and gold swept like a full tide of glory the broad western expanse that lay before us, she raised herself, looked into all our faces, held her lips for a last kiss from us of the household, and said in tones as clear as ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... Lake Ontario, with its expanse of boundless blue, rolls like an ocean in the far distance. We can see it from the hill-top where the sweet-smelling red-pines grow. At the bottom of the hill lies Brankly itself, with its orchards and homestead and fields of golden grain, and its little river, ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... Union such as, drawn by the magnet of free institutions, have peacefully sought for admission. From sire to son has descended our federative creed, opposed to the idea of sectional conflict for private advantage, and favoring the wider expanse of our union. If envy and jealousy and sectional strife are eating like rust into the bonds our fathers expected to bind us, they come from causes which our Southern atmosphere has never furnished. As we have shared in the toils, so we have gloried in the triumphs, ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... sights and at no great distance, there is the sea-coast of Akashi, in the Province of Harima, which is, I think, especially beautiful. I cannot, indeed, point out in detail its most remarkable features, but, in general, the blue expanse of the sea is singularly charming. Here, too, the home of the former Governor of the Province constitutes an object of great attraction. He has assumed the tonsure, and resides there with his beautiful daughter. He is the descendant of a high personage, and was not without ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... grass into a continuous undulating surface, silver crested, a wave always passing, never past. The sky was unspeakably fresh and blue, with its light clouds, darker edged toward the far horizon of the unbounded, unbroken expanse of alternating levels and low hills. Across the broken ridges passed the teeming bird life of the land. The Eskimo plover in vast bands circled and sought their nesting places. Came also the sweep of cinnamon wings as the giant sickle-billed ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... on the surface of the ocean looked like waving corn before the ears are ripe. The vegetation beneath the water delighted the eyes of the sailors tired of the endless expanse of blue. But the seaweed soon became so thick that they were afraid of entangling their rudders and keels, and of remaining prisoners forever in the forests of the ocean, as ships of the northern seas are shut in by ice. Thus each joy soon turned to fear,—so ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... the beautiful expanse of water to which the Indians had given a name that Europeans have never violated, the voyagers were charmed with the prospect before them. The season was mild, and nature had fully assumed that emerald robe of spring. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... verdant expanse, less than a quarter of a century ago, man was rarely met; still more rarely civilised man; and rarer yet his dwelling-place. If at times a human being appeared among the prairie groves, he was not there as a sojourner—only a traveller, passing from place to place. The herds of cattle, with shaggy ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... of more than a very few acres. Many were the merest islets imaginable, and on one of the largest of the cluster rose a tall, gaunt light-house, having the customary dwelling of its keeper at its base. Nothing else was visible; the broad expanse of the blue waters of the Gulf excepted. All the land in sight would not probably have made one field of twenty acres in extent, and that seemed cut off from the rest of the world, by a broad barrier of water. It was a spot of such singular situation and accessories, that Mulford ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... when it has a light one, and closer to the observer when the air is clear than when it is raining, snowing, foggy or the atmosphere is filled with smoke. An object looks farther off when the observer is facing the sun than when he has his back to it. A smooth expanse of snow, grain fields or water makes distances seem shorter ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... a boundless expanse of sea. The first object that presented itself to my sight was an enormous whale spouting water about a quarter of a mile distant from me; then I observed another, then a third, and subsequently, several more; they presented a singular and picturesque appearance, ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... eyes of the children reached there was only ice. Hummocks, slabs, and spires of ice rose about them, all covered with snow. Instead of being a wall which one might surmount and which would be followed by an expanse of snow, as they had thought, new walls of ice lifted up out of the glacier, shattered and fissured and variegated with innumerable blue sinuous lines; and behind them were other walls of the same nature, and behind them others again, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... went out into the veranda, and took a survey of the ocean—the broad infinite expanse of waters into which I was about to plunge ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... city that seemed the newborn offspring of the waves; on and on, the myriad lights, in masses, in festoons, in great gleaming globes of fire from towers rising higher than Susan's and Rod's native hills. They looked to the south. There, too, rose city, mile after mile, and then beyond it the expanse of the bay; and everywhere the lights, the beautiful, soft, starlike lights, shedding a radiance as of heaven itself over the whole scene. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... bright, betraying a hidden vitality which would not have been suspected from the whole impression he made. A high forehead, very prominent in the upper and middle part, contracted below, so that there was very little breadth at the temples, but considerable expanse above. The eyes were near together and separated by the knifelike bridge of the nose, the latter descending in a fine curve of wonderfully delicate outline. The chin was pointed, and the compressed mouth showed little ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... Upright within the rock arose, and fac'd Such part of heav'n, that from before my steps The beams were shrouded of the sinking sun. Nor many stairs were overpass, when now By fading of the shadow we perceiv'd The sun behind us couch'd: and ere one face Of darkness o'er its measureless expanse Involv'd th' horizon, and the night her lot Held individual, each of us had made A stair his pallet: not that will, but power, Had fail'd us, by the nature of that mount Forbidden further travel. As the goats, That late have skipp'd and ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... grandeur stretched in front of him. How far he had walked he had no idea,—nor did he know how many hours he had taken in walking,—but he had somehow found his way to the summit of a rocky wooded height, from which he could survey the whole troubled expanse of wild sky and wilder sea,—while just below him the hills were split asunder into a huge cleft, or "coombe," running straight down to the very lip of ocean, with rampant foliage hanging about it on either side in lavish garlands of green, and big boulders piled up about it, from whose smooth ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... eighteen, Helen Le Grande looked out upon life's opening sky as thoughtlessly as she would look upon the bright waters of the blue harbor that stretched before her father's mansion, where sky and water blended in a peaceful, azure expanse, little heeding or caring whether storms came, or sunshine rested on the deep. Bertha Levy, the little darked-eyed Jewess who stood by her side under the stone archway, was nothing more or less than a piquant little maiden, ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... was almost dark, but the room beyond was a blaze of light, with the curtains drawn, and apparently every lamp the house contained trimmed and burning. He himself stood in the shadow, and his entrance had been unnoticed, though almost the entire expanse of the room before him was visible through ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... at the vast expanse of leather, both sections pointing inwardly, and said, "Well, dam a fool," and "changed cars" at the junction. As he got them on the right feet, and hired a raftsman to tie them up for him, he said he would get even with the doctor if he had to catch the ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... disappointed that London would not look emptier even in the fashionable squares, which she insisted on exploring in search of solitude. They made little gay outings in a joyous spirit of adventure, getting up early and going by train to some little station, with an adjacent expanse of wood or heather, whence they came home with their luncheon basket full of flowers, wherewith to gladden Mrs. Lucas's eyes, and those of Mother Carey's district. They prepared their surprises too. Several hopelessly dingy panels were painted black and adorned with stately ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... coast astern of his ship. It is a matter personal to the man. It is not the ship that takes her departure; the seaman takes his Departure by means of cross-bearings which fix the place of the first tiny pencil-cross on the white expanse of the track-chart, where the ship's position at noon shall be marked by just such another tiny pencil cross for every day of her passage. And there may be sixty, eighty, any number of these crosses on the ship's track from land to land. The greatest ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... followed our ship; some of them so great, that, when their wings were opened, they measured seven spans from point to point of their wings, as the sailors said. It is a marvellous thing to think how God hath so provided for these fowls in so vast an expanse of sea, that they are all fat. The Portuguese have named them all, according to some obvious property. Thus they call some rushtails, because their tails are small and long like a rush, and not proportionate to their bodies; some fork-tails, because their tails are very ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... setting glories; Night, Wrapped in her sable robe, with silent step Comes to our bed and breathes it in our ears. Night and the dawn, bright day and thoughtful eve, All times, all bounds, the limitless expanse, As one great mystic instrument, are touched By an unseen, living Hand, and conscious chords Quiver with joy in this great jubilee. The dying hear it; and as sounds of earth Grow dull and distant, wake their passing souls To mingle in this ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... than anything," he pronounced, as he stood looking over the desolate expanse of country, "is that when one comes face to face with the fellow he presents all the appearance of a nerveless and broken-down coward. Then all of a sudden there spring up these evidences of the most amazing, the most diabolical resource.... ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in the wide American soul there shall be Lake Superiors, inland oceans of thought; and the streams of her eloquence shall be like the sweep of the Mississippi in his strength. The rugged strength of the New England hills, the luxuriance of the sunny South, the measureless expanse of the prairie, the broad flow of our rivers, the dashing of our cataracts, the huge battlements of the everlasting mountains,—these are American. On the face of the globe there is nothing like to them. When therefore these various influences have been thoroughly wrought into the national ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... bishop's, but as it was still too soon to call for him, he stood for a few moments looking down upon the campus. The giant shadow of the Hall had now crept to the verge of the plateau. There was no human figure on its bleak expanse, but the small trees which found scant nourishment in the rock beneath swayed gently in the broken wind, like a line of sentries marking time. In the centre of the line the flagpole sprang up, thin and white, lifting the stars and stripes into ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... up the tower they saw still more. From the plateau they looked down into the valley: a blue expanse around them, blue from the darkness of the forests and from autumn vapours, and in the beautiful blue outstretched villages the white houses half hidden behind tall hedges. And here, looking down on Belgium, with its grey fumes hanging like a cloud ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... human figure, a woman's dress, disturbing here in the desert expanse, had moved in front of him. Sommers hit the horse with his crop and was about to gallop on, when something in the way the woman held herself caught his attention. She was leaning against the wind, her skirt streaming behind her, her face thrust into the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... Denviers to our guide in an imperative tone, as the latter was looking longingly at the wide expanse of sea over which our boat was helplessly drifting, "lie down yonder immediately!" The Arab rose slowly and reluctantly, and then extended himself at the bottom of the boat out of sight of the ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... detail of the Harvey system that makes you wonder. Out on the desert, in a dead-gray expanse of silence and sagebrush, your train halts at a junction point that you never even heard of before. There is not much to be seen—a depot, a 'dobe cabin or so, a few frame shacks, a few natives, a few Indians ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... a long silence. All eyes were turned toward the west. Above, a riot of rose and gold and purple flamed across the sky. Below, more softly, the colors seemed almost repeated in the waving, shifting, changing expanse of fairylike loveliness that the prairie ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... England," who held a council at "Kyningestun, famosa ilia locus," in 838, would be at a loss to find his way through its streets could he revisit it. It has the population of a Saxon county. Viewed from the massive bridge, with the church-tower rising above an expanse of sightly buildings, it possesses the least possible resemblance to the cluster of wattled huts that may be presumed to have sheltered ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... sees them in country lanes and rustic villages; on lonely moorlands, where narrow, brown foot-tracks thread the expanse of green waste, and occasionally a hawk hovers overhead, or the mountain ash hangs its scarlet berries above the huge fallen stones set up by the Druids in the old days; he sees them on the hill-sides, in the woods, ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... those wonderful white stars she would never be able to go to sleep. They blinked down through the black-barred, delicate crisscross of pine foliage, and they looked so big and so close. Then she gazed away to open space, where an expanse of sky glittered with stars, and the longer she gazed the larger they grew and the more ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... causes.—See "Pallas's Travels" 1793 to 1794 pages 129 to 134.) Well may we affirm that every part of the world is habitable! Whether lakes of brine, or those subterranean ones hidden beneath volcanic mountains—warm mineral springs—the wide expanse and depths of the ocean—the upper regions of the atmosphere, and even the surface of perpetual snow—all support ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... sacrilege upon a night like this! What a nocturne in blue and silver might be suggested by that moon rising above the desert. There is a movement in one of Mendelssohn's songs which seems to embody it all— a sense of vastness, of repetition, the cry of the wind over an interminable expanse. The subtler emotions which cannot be translated into words are still to be hinted ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of that day, when the brother and sister had strolled by moonlight up to the windmill which occupies the highest point of Sark, and as they stood looking upon the pale expanse of sea, dotted with the gleam of light-houses near and far, Dora broke the silence to ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... out in a boat on the Ganges. It was a beautiful evening in autumn. The sun had just set; the silence of the sky was full to the brim with ineffable peace and beauty. The vast expanse of water was without a ripple, mirroring all the changing shades of the sunset glow. Miles and miles of a desolate sandbank lay like a huge amphibious reptile of some antediluvian age, with its scales glistening in ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... of the eighteenth century. It might have been church-time on a summer's day in the reign of Queen Anne; the stillness was too perfect to be modern, the nearness counted so as distance, and there was something so fresh and sound in the originality of the large smooth house, the expanse of beautiful brickwork that showed for pink rather than red and that had been kept clear of messy creepers by the law under which a woman with a rare complexion disdains a veil. When Paul Overt became aware that the people under ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... character. The northern half is a land of forest and morass, plentifully supplied with water in the form of rivers, lakes, and marshes, and broken up by numerous patches of cultivation. The southern half is, as it were, the other side of the pattern—an immense expanse of rich, arable land, broken up by occasional patches of sand or forest. The imaginary undulating line separating those two regions starts from the western frontier about the 50th parallel of latitude, and runs in a northeasterly ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... particular as any of Eve's daughters,—her back seems broad enough to bear the blame of all the peccadilloes that have been committed since Adam. She girdeth her waist—or what she is pleased to esteem as such—nearly up to her shoulders, from beneath which that huge dorsal expanse, in mountainous declivity, emergeth. Respect for her alone preventeth the idle boys, who follow her about in shoals, whenever she cometh abroad, from getting up and riding. But her presence infallibly commands a reverence. She is, indeed, as the Americans would express ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... loosely connected with the body that it is difficult to catch the insect without breaking the greater part of it off. Mr. Bates has suggested that the large brittle wings of the metallic Morphos may often save them from being caught by birds, who are likely to seize some portion of the wide expanse of wing, and this, breaking off, frees the butterfly. Probably the long cumbersome tail of the Phenax has a similar use. When flying, it is the only portion of the insect seen; and birds trying to capture ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... Moses standing on Mount Pisgah. It is to Bacon, we think, as he appears in the first book of the Novum Organum, that the comparison applies with peculiar felicity. There we see the great Lawgiver looking round from his lonely elevation on an infinite expanse; behind him a wilderness of dreary sands and bitter waters in which successive generations have sojourned, always moving, yet never advancing, reaping no harvest, and building no abiding city; before him a goodly land, a land of promise, a land flowing ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sun, and furnishing a nesting-place for numberless small birds that twittered and chirped their joy in life and love and June. Occasionally a gap in the foliage revealed the placid beauty of corn, oats, and clover, stretching in broad expanse to the distant purple woods, with here and there a field of the cloth of gold—the fast-ripening wheat that waited the hand of the mower. Not only is it the traveler's manifest duty to walk slowly in the midst of such surroundings, but he will do well if now and then he ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... piece of iron under the ground. We had three beds and a table, and so were comfortable. When one stood on the earth which covered our roof, it was impossible to see any suggestion of a home underneath. Nothing was in sight but the wide expanse of rolling country cut up on all sides by trenches and shell holes, and wearing a sort of khaki uniform of light brown mud. To the east of us, lay the road bordered with leafless and battered trees, past which went an interminable line of lorries, guns and limbers. We were very comfortable, and ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... bodies are—inference directly leads us to the theory that there is a supreme intelligent agent, called the Lord, who possesses unfathomable, unlimited powers and wisdom, is capable of constructing the entire world, is without a body, and through his mere volition brings about the infinite expanse of this entire universe so variously and wonderfully planned. As Brahman may thus be ascertained by means of knowledge other than revelation, the text quoted under the preceding Sutra cannot be taken to convey instruction as to Brahman. Since, moreover, experience demonstrates that material ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... phases of emotion which they exhibited were painful to me at first, but I at length came to take a morbid pleasure in noting them. It was a study for a sculptor. By long practice I learned to detect the shadow of each coming change, where a casual observer would see only a serene expanse of placid politeness. I knew just where the radiance, awakened by the luscious, swelling, crimson globes, faded into doubt, settled into certainty, glared into perplexity, fired into rage. I saw the grimace, suppressed as soon as begun, but not less patent ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... past, whose long-forgotten music Still fills the wide expanse, Tingeing the sober twilight of the present With ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... the village (when other sounds, which I shall note presently, were for an instant still) came the whoop of children, mellowed by distance into a confused yet thrilling sound, which fell upon the heart like the voice of our gone childhood itself. Before, in the far expanse, stretched a chain of hills on which the autumn sun sank slowly, pouring its yellow beams over groups of peasantry, which, on the opposite side of the rivulet and at some interval from us, were scattered, partly over the green, and ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... used as a laboratory and a play ground. The trees provide subject matter for a course in horticulture. The fertile land is turned to agricultural use, and the broad expanse of twenty-four acres furnishes additional space for ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... whether I could not get shelter at Fuentes. They shrugged their shoulders and advised me to go to Marchena, which had a small inn. I went on for several hours, battling against the wind, bent down in order to expose myself as little as possible, over a huge expanse of pasture land, a desert of green. I reached the crest of the hill, but there was no sign of Marchena, unless that was a tower which I saw very far away, its summit just rising ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... great earnestness, looking across the kindling expanse of hill and valley before us: 'You know, the very dead things round us,—these here peaks, an' rocks, an' lakes, an' mountains—ay, an' the woods an' the sun an' the sky above our heads,—cusses us when we do anythink wrong. You ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... nearing the clouds. Down below me, all blurred and shadowed with rain, lay the vast expanse of Salisbury Plain. Half-a- dozen flying machines were doing hackwork at the thousand-foot level, looking like little black swallows against the green background. I dare say they were wondering what I was doing up in cloud-land. ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and together they raced to the top, scrambling, slipping, falling, but finally arriving there, breathless and triumphant. Before them lay a bit of Canada's loveliest lake, the Lake of the Woods, so-called from its myriad, heavily wooded islands, that make of its vast expanse a maze of channels, rivers and waterways. Calm, without a ripple, lay the glassy, sunlit surface, each island, rock and tree meeting its reflected image at the water line, the sky above flecked ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... we going now, Dan?" asked Lily, as she glanced out upon the vast expanse of waters which rolled to ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... ourselves, separates and isolates us more than usual from the profusion of oddities in the midst of which we seem to be lost. Beneath us lies always the immense blue background: Nagasaki illumined by moonlight, and the expanse of silvered, glittering water, which seems like a vaporous vision suspended in mid-air. Behind us is the great open temple, where the bonzes officiate, to the accompaniment of sacred bells and wooden clappers-looking, ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... looking up at the sky did Pierre cease to feel how sordid and humiliating were all mundane things compared with the heights to which his soul had just been raised. At the entrance to the Arbat Square an immense expanse of dark starry sky presented itself to his eyes. Almost in the center of it, above the Prechistenka Boulevard, surrounded and sprinkled on all sides by stars but distinguished from them all by its nearness to the earth, its white light, and its long uplifted tail, shone the enormous and brilliant ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... portliness. His limbs were massive and slow of movement and his head large, with a mane of slightly graying hair flung back from a wide, unfurrowed brow. Small and very black eyes pierced out from crinkled heavy lids and a bulldog jaw shot out from under a fat beak of a nose. And over the broad expanse of countenance was spread a smile so sweet, so deep, so high that it gave the impression of obscuring the form of features entirely. In point of fact it was a thick and impenetrable veil that the Senator had for long hung before his face from behind which ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... a book on the rocks, overlooking a familiar scene, the great expanse of the sands at low tide. In the far distance near the river was a dim feminine figure in a long coat, accompanied by three dogs. Half an hour later, when I glanced up from my book, I chanced to notice that the slender feminine figure was marching ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... those which naturally arise from that constitution of things? And, Why refuse to see, in this constitution of things, that wisdom of contrivance, that bountiful provision, which is so evident, whether we look up into the great expanse of boundless space, where luminous bodies without number are placed, and where, in all probability, still more numerous bodies are perpetually moving and illuminated for some great end; or whether we turn our prospect towards ourselves, and see the exquisite ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... later and they came to a wide expanse of level ground at the foot of the high cliffs, where a group of Esquimaux huts, similar to those they had left, ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... known, and were to mark upon it, in any colour that he liked, the spots where Englishmen have fought, and English blood has been poured forth, and the treasure of England squandered, scarcely a country, scarcely a province of the vast expanse of the habitable globe would be ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... rivers, mountain defiles, and rolling plains, sear with ripened oats, and bathed in the glow of the setting sun. As Father Jose gazed, he was penetrated with a pious longing. Already his imagination, filled with enthusiastic conceptions, beheld all that vast expanse gathered under the mild sway of the Holy Faith, and peopled with zealous converts. Each little knoll in fancy became crowned with a chapel; from each dark canyon gleamed the white walls of a mission building. Growing bolder in ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... Gothic chamber, and shining cheerily upon the varying countenance of Clarence and the more contemplative features of his host. In the latter you might see that care and thought had been harsh but not unhallowed companions. In the lines which crossed his expanse of brow, time seemed to have buried many hopes; but his mien and air, if loftier, were gentler than in younger days; and though they had gained somewhat in dignity, had lost greatly ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the oar's resounding stroke Comes echoing from the main. Save that report, A death-like silence through the wide expanse Broods o'er the ...
— The Grecian Daughter • Arthur Murphy
... superiority wherever it grows; it is a sacred plant, my friends, its name is LIBERTY, and may God grant that that plant may continue to grow in the United States of America, and never be rooted out so long as it shall please Him to continue the celestial orb to roll in yon azure expanse. ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... referring to the weather in every connection. And on my side his few mumbled words were enough to make me see the lower limb of the sun clearing the line of the horizon, the tremble of a vast ripple running over all the visible expanse of the sea, as if the waters had shuddered, giving birth to the globe of light, while the last puff of the breeze would stir the air ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... word has a complete charm. It is like the shimmer of the waters. All this expanse of hammered ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... occupies and fortifies the crest of a long drawn out hill, or, to give it dignity, it had perhaps best be called in the language of the native "de la montagne de Langres," since from its apex, it is truly dominant of a wide expanse of horizon. ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... bears a certain resemblance to the state of Spain. Of that sunny land, travellers tell us the strangest inconsistencies of the people and natural products. It is an arid land, without verdure, nothing but prickly aloes and scattered orange groves, mere dots in a sunburnt expanse. Silver and gold abound, and every other metal, yet none of the mines pay except the quicksilver. A rich soil is uncultivated, and every natural advantage thrown away. There are railways, and engines, and telegraphs, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... booth immediately in his rear; the sunset light on his broad immaculate waistcoat; the long tea-tables, with their rows of faces all turned deferentially towards him; the shadows slanting from the trees; the still expanse of the bay, and far across the bay a bank of clouds softly, ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the discovery of America by Columbus, the Spaniards prided themselves on the supposed fact that their country was the last point of solid land on the earth westward. Beyond them, they thought, there was nothing but a vast expanse of water—a shoreless ocean—a mystery never to be solved. Consequently the early coins of that country, in order to give prominence to this idea, were indented with a picture of the pillars of Hercules, the two great ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... low, and the road lay across bare and stony prairies, the gray expanse of which became lost in the distant mist. This depressing landscape would have made a disagreeable impression on a less unobserving traveller, but, as we have said, Julien looked only inward, and the phenomena of the exterior world influenced him only ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... sake of God or for the sake of the world, or for both; those undertaken for God's sake are those which the saints undertake when they attempt to live the lives of angels in human bodies; those undertaken for the sake of the world are those of the men who traverse such a vast expanse of water, such a variety of climates, so many strange countries, to acquire what are called the blessings of fortune; and those undertaken for the sake of God and the world together are those of brave soldiers, who no sooner do they see in the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... watch the right. Behind this curtain marched the infantry, Hildyard's brigade on the right, Barton's on the left, line after line of brown men ten yards apart, two hundred yards between the lines, spreading in this open formation over a wide expanse of country, and looking a mighty swarm. Behind these again dark blocks of artillery and waggons moved slowly forward. Behind, and above all, the naval battery began to throw its shells ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill |
