"Solstice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... month of December, as I said above, in my twenty- third year; and this, being the southern solstice (for winter I cannot call it), was the particular time of my harvest, and required me to be pretty much abroad in the fields, when, going out early in the morning, even before it was thorough daylight, I was surprised with seeing a light of ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... the house-spirits, of which we find so many traces among the Indo-European peoples. These house-spirits had their chief seat on the family hearth; and their great festival was that of the New Year, celebrated at the winter solstice. The policy of the Church in early and mediaeval times was to baptize to Christian uses as many of the heathen beliefs and ceremonies as possible. The New Year festival thus became united with the anniversary of the birth of Christ; ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... Solstices, are points of the Ecliptic at a distance of 90 deg. from the Equinoxes, at which the sun attains its highest declination in each hemisphere. They are called the Summer and Winter Solstice according to the season in which the sun appears to pass ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... Germany and England have a close resemblance to those of Spring, are to be considered as a prelude to the May sports, and that they both originally symbolized the victory of Summer over Winter,[17] which, beginning at the winter solstice, is completed in the second month of spring; secondly, that the conquering Summer is represented by the May King, or by the Hobby-Horse (as also by the Dragon-Slayer, whether St. George, Siegfried, Apollo, or the Sanskrit Indras); and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... is the symbol of the summer solstice, as the snail, which occurs only as a head ornament in the manuscripts and not independently, is the symbol of the winter solstice; both, as the animals of slowest motion, represent the apparent standstill of the ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas
... that the Taronhiawagon, he who comes from the Sky, of the Onondagas, who was their supreme God, who spoke to them in dreams, and in whose honor the chief festival of their calendar was celebrated about the winter solstice, was, in fact, Ioskeha under another name.[172-1] As to the legend of the Good and Bad Minds given by Cusic, to which I have referred in a previous chapter, and the later and wholly spurious myth of Hiawatha, first made public by Mr. Clark in his History of Onondaga ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... of Tongataboo, toward the tropic, the climate is more variable, than in countries farther within that line, though, perhaps, that might be owing to the season of the year, which was now the winter solstice. The winds are, for the most part, from some point between south and east; and, when moderate, are commonly attended with fine weather. When they blow fresher, the weather is often cloudy, though open; and, in such cases, there is frequently rain. The wind sometimes veers to the N.E., ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... half; but the passage [from it] into Britain is of equal distance with that from Gaul. In the middle of this voyage is an island which is called Mona;[39] many smaller islands besides are supposed to lie [there], of which islands some have written that at the time of the winter solstice it is night there for thirty consecutive days. We, in our inquiries about that matter, ascertained nothing, except that, by accurate measurements with water, we perceived the nights to be shorter there than on the continent. The length of this side, as their account states, is 700 ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... audacity carried the people with him when, after showing what might be done by more drastic enforcement of the conscription laws, he concluded: "Let us then unite our hands and our hearts, lock our shields together, and we may well believe that before another summer solstice falls upon us, it will be the enemy that will be asking us for conferences and occasions in which ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... two influences, the annual and diurnal successions of cold and heat, in their joint effect, we find, that about, or a little after the summer solstice, the influence of the sun being at its maximum, the nervous sensibility, heat, circulating excitement, and cutaneous secretions of the body, are also at their maximum. The temperature of the day and night differ so little, that the sedative effects of ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... their places. Male and female, the groups come to us in winter and retire in summer: their faint splendors fall down upon our harvest nights, and then give way to the more august retinue of the wintry solstice. The boreal pivot, whose journal is the awful, compact blue, may, for aught I know, be hobnobbing at this moment with the most masculine of starry masculinities. But if it be, it is in little sympathy ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... that leads the earth over a circuit of five hundred millions of miles back to the solstice at the appointed moment without the loss of one second,—no, not the millionth part of a second,—for ages and ages of which it traveled that imperiled ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... to Dom Manuel, "Now Horvendile informs me that you were duly born in a cave at about the time of the winter solstice, of a virgin mother and of a father ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... Out of its mysterious darkness will slip easily into his mind the old-time loved and half-forgotten legends that grew out of the winter night in the twilight of the early days of the Aryan race. At the time of the winter solstice it was the custom of the gods to leave their dwellings in heaven and come down to earth. In the shout of the wind in the pines he may well hear Wotan riding overhead in his gray cloak and broad-brimmed hat pressed low ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... a new increase and lustre in our own times. Our age has, in some sort, arrived at the summit of perfection. And since for some years the rate of the progress is much slower and appears almost insensible—as the days seem to cease lengthening when the solstice is near—it is pleasant to think that probably there are not many things for which we need envy ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... Enough remains of glimmering light To guide the wanderer's steps aright, Yet not enough from far to show His figure to the watchful foe. With cautious step and ear awake, He climbs the crag and threads the brake; And not the summer solstice there Tempered the midnight mountain air, But every breeze that swept the wold Benumbed his drenched limbs with cold. In dread, in danger, and alone, Famished and chilled, through ways unknown, Tangled and steep, he journeyed on; Till, as a rock's ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... Puritan poet in alluding to the season of the Nativity takes an opposite line of thought, and regards the diminished sunshine of winter as a veiling of an inferior flame before the light of "a greater Sun." Prudentius proclaims the increase of the sun's light, which begins after the winter solstice, as symbolic of the ever-widening influence of the True Light. The idea is given in a terse form by St. Peter Chrysologus, Serm. 159: Crescere dies coepit, quia verus dies illuxit. "The day begins to lengthen out, inasmuch as the true Day hath ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... over a century no Emperor ventured out from behind the frowning Walls of the Forbidden City save for brief annual ceremonies such as the Worship of Heaven on the occasion of the Winter Solstice, and during the two "flights"— first, in 1860 when Peking was occupied by an Anglo-French expedition and the Court incontinently sought sanctuary in the mountain Palaces of Jehol; and, again, in ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... true principles of astronomy have now taught us the reason why, at a certain latitude, the sun, at the summer solstice, appears never to set: and at a lower latitude, the ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... did not at once bring good luck: however, it did chance to be the turning-point, solstice of this long Greenland winter; after which, amid storms and alarms, daylight came steadily nearer. Storms and alarms: for there came rumors of quarrels out at Potsdam, quarrels on the old score between ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... twenty-eighth of the before named month, they entered the country of Ilduz[13], which was occupied by the tribe of Jel, and under the dominion of Shir Behram, or Scheir Begrahim; and though the sun was then in the summer solstice, they were often astonished to find ice two inches thick in this vast desert. On the eighth of Jomada-al-akher, they were alarmed, by receiving, news that the son of Ahmed Beg had plundered the Daji, who was ambassador from Awis, or Oweys Khan; and they made every possible haste to pass through ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... and his life, as will be understood by what has been said above, must be outlined by the course of the Sun, as the shadow of the Logos. The part of the course lived out during the human life is that which falls between the winter solstice and the reaching of the zenith in summer. The Hero is born at the winter solstice, dies at the spring equinox, and, conquering death, ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... meant a zone of the earth parallel to the equator, in which the days are of a certain length at the summer solstice. The term has now passed to the physical branch of geography, and means the general ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... captives were left to the mercy of the guards, and the guards determined to secure them for the night in the prison of the garrison, a chamber known by the fearful name of the Black Hole. The space was only twenty feet square. The air-boles were small and obstructed. It was the summer solstice, the season when the fierce heat of Bengal can scarcely be rendered tolerable to natives of England by lofty hills and by the ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... To guide the wanderer's steps aright, Yet not enough from far to show His figure to the watchful foe. With cautious step, and ear awake, He climbs the crag and threads the brake; 10 And not the summer solstice there, Tempered the midnight mountain air, But every breeze that swept the wold, Benumbed his drenched limbs with cold. In dread, in danger, and alone, 15 Famished and chilled, through ways unknown, Tangled and steep, he journeyed on; Till, as a rock's huge point he turned, A ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... the ceremony is described as a harvest festival, and swinging is practised by the Letts of Russia with the avowed intention of influencing the growth of the crops. In the spring and early summer, between Easter and St. John's Day (the summer solstice), every Lettish peasant is said to devote his leisure hours to swinging diligently; for the higher he rises in the air the higher will ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... very literal and real sense, the creator-god in whom this world lives, moves and has its being; and he is the saviour-god who was born of a virgin nebula, and every winter descends into hell and rises from the dead (the southern solstice) by a new birth and ascends into heaven to be seated at the right hand of the father (the sky) at the northern solstice, and finally he is the illuminator god who lighteth every man that cometh into ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... and these in turn had retaliated thus establishing a vendetta which became part and parcel of the lives of certain families, as naturally and unavoidably as birth, love and death. As regularly as the solstice they alternated in picking each other off. Branches of the Hip Leong and On Gee tongs sprang up in San Francisco and New York—and the feud was transferred with them to Chatham Square, a feud imposing a sacred obligation rooted in blood, ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... the worship of the Prey Beings takes place either a little before or after the winter solstice ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... classes—called Agniswattas, Fenapa, Ushampa, Swadhavat, and Verhishada), as also those others that have forms; the wheel of time, and the illustrious conveyer himself of the sacrificial butter; all sinners among human beings, as also those that have died during the winter solstice; these officers of Yama who have been appointed to count the allotted days of everybody and everything; the Singsapa, Palasa, Kasa, and Kusa trees and plants, in their embodied forms, these all, O king, wait upon and worship the god of justice in that assembly house of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... One day, as he chased the wild boar in Lebanon, near the sources of the river of Byblus, the animal which he was hunting turned upon him, and so gored his thigh that he died of the wound. Henceforth he was mourned annually. At the turn of the summer solstice, the anniversary of his death, all the women of Byblus went in a wild procession to Aphaca, in the Lebanon, where his temple stood, and wept and wailed on account of his death. The river, which his blood had once ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... The reader can judge of them by the accompanying figure, which sums up the author's observations during one of the recent oppositions of Mars (1900-1901). The size of the polar cap diminished from 4,680 kilometers to 840. The solstice of the Martian summer was on April 11th. The snows were still melting on July 6th. Sometimes they disappear almost entirely during the Martian month that corresponds to our month of August, as never ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... spring is upon us, The seed of our forefathers Quickens again in the soil, And these flags are the small, early flowers Of the solstice of our Hope! ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... period of the social solstice when the fag end of the season had fizzled out like a wet firecracker in the April rains; and Geraldine and Kathleen were tired, mentally and bodily. And Scott was buying polo ponies from a British friend and shotguns from a needy gentleman ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... precise testimony in the ancient annals of Tsūr, that the principal festivity of Mal-karth, the incarnation of the Sun at the Winter Solstice, held at Tsūr, was called his rebirth or his awakening, and that it was celebrated by means of a pyre, on which the god was supposed to regain, through the aid of fire, a new life. This festival was celebrated in the month Peritius ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... fit for two, at least for two waiting-maids; further, certain necessary horses: one would say, he is himself quitting France, not without outlay? We observe finally that their Majesties, Heaven willing, will assist at Corpus-Christi Day, this blessed Summer Solstice, in Assumption Church, here at Paris, to the joy of all the world. For which same day, moreover, brave Bouille, at Metz, as we find, has invited a party of friends to dinner; but indeed is gone from home, in the interim, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... many birds of several species sing last year after Midsummer; enough to prove that the summer solstice is not the period that puts a stop to the music of the woods. The yellowhammer no doubt persists with more steadiness than any other; but the woodlark, the wren, the red-breast, the swallow, the white-throat, the goldfinch, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... midnight, and noon-day, are much the same here: I wrote at midnight by the clear light of heaven. The scientific reader need not be informed, that within the arctic circle the sun is but a very short time beneath the horizon, during the summer solstice. The people of Fort Good Hope see him rising and setting behind the same hill; and in clear weather his rays shed a light above the horizon even after he is set; while during the winter solstice the same hill ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... month.] "If a luminary, like that which now appeared, were to shine throughout the month following the winter solstice during which the constellation Cancer appears in the east at the setting of the sun, there would be no interruption to the light, but the whole month would be as a ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... of our race, men dwelt in temporary huts, of bowers of branches, as easily constructed as a bird's-nest, and which they built,—if it should be called building, when such sweet homes of a summer solstice rather grew than were made with hands,—which Nature, we will say, assisted them to rear where fruit abounded, where fish and game were plentiful, or, most especially, where the sense of beauty was to be gratified by a lovelier shade than elsewhere, and a more exquisite ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Ben Venue, and Ben Ledy, or the hill of God, in Perthshire, 3,009 feet in height, so called from the inhabitants of the surrounding villages, in former times, meeting on its summit at the summer solstice, three days and nights for the purpose of devotion. These three mountains, with their vicinities are enshrined in Sir Walter Scott's Lady of the Lake; and the village of Balquidder, at the foot of Ben Ledy, is the burial place of Rob Roy. We have just described ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... the time for planting and harvesting, for determining the new year, and for fixing the dates of certain other ceremonial observances. By the aid of such devices as the native priests have at their command they are enabled to fix the date of the winter solstice with a fair degree of accuracy. Such rude determination of time was probably an aboriginal invention, and may have furnished the motive in other cases for placing stone pillars in such unusual positions. The explanation of the governor of Zui for a sun symbol seen on an upright stone ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... maintaining its equipoise, viz., by powerful daily exercise; and thus I lived in the light and presence, or, (if I should not be suspected of seeking rhetorical expressions, I would say,) in one eternal solstice ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... glance be cast— The Age of the Antonines! O summit of fate, O zenith of time When a pagan gentleman reigned, And the olive was nailed to the inn of the world Nor the peace of the just was feigned. A halcyon Age, afar it shines, Solstice of ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... months, the uplands of the continent are warmed and the northern zone of low pressure pushes southward. So, in Adelie Land, short spells of calm weather may be expected over a period of barely three months around the summer solstice. This explanation is intentionally popular. The meteorological problem is one which can only be fully discussed when all the manifold observations have been gathered together, from other contemporary Antarctic ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... and deliverer. The tempest was so outrageous that they were forced to take down their sails and let fall their anchors. Here they found the difference between Sweden and this country: there, at midnight, one might plainly read without a candle; here, though nearer the summer solstice and the days at longest, they found at least four hours of dark night, as seeming ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... for precious; Chaucer has 'forword' for promise; Sir John Cheke 'freshman' for proselyte; 'mooned' for lunatic; 'foreshewer' for prophet; 'hundreder' for centurion; Jewel 'foretalk', where we now employ preface; Holland 'sunstead' where we use solstice; 'leechcraft' instead of medicine; and another, 'wordcraft' for logic; 'starconner' (Gascoigne) did service once, if not instead of astrologer, yet side by side with it; 'halfgod' (Golding) had the ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... splashing rain-drops and lowering clouds did not serve to raise the spirits. It was an inauspicious beginning of active service, and typical of the many long and weary weeks of wet discomfort that the Sixth of Michigan was destined to experience before the summer solstice had fairly passed. The points of interest,—the public buildings, the white house, the massive Greek architecture of the Treasury building, the monument, all these as they glided like phantoms, through the mist, attracted scarcely a casual glance. ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... inured to cold, having been brought up in forests, as already observed, and a cool country, but they were unnerved with the heat, which made them sweat violently and breathe hard, and put their shields before their faces, for the battle took place after the summer solstice, and, according to the Roman reckoning, three days before the new moon of the month now called Augustus[101], but then Sextilis. The dust also which covered their enemies helped to encourage the Romans; for they did not see their number at a distance, but running forward they ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... succession of the seasons—Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Owing to the position of the Earth's axis with regard to her orbit, the Sun appears to travel 23-1/2 deg. north and 23-1/2 deg. south of the equator. When, on June 21, the orb attains his highest northern altitude, we have the summer solstice and the longest days; when, by retracing his steps, he declines 23-1/2 deg. below the equator, at which point he arrives on December 21, we have the winter solstice and the shortest days. Intermediate ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... sea-conceiving, from the fact of this bird's being said to lay her eggs in rocks near the sea); and the [Greek: halkyonides hemerai]—halcyon days—were those fourteen 'during the calm weather about the winter solstice,' during which the bird was said to build her nest and lay her eggs; hence, by an easy transition, perfect quietude ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... embrace And quickens in his arms.—All, all, but thou! For thou art single as the northern pole; As cold, as distant, and unreachable To what hath passion's warmth; and, though Thy life be at its summer solstice—bright With day—thy heart still turns to barren ice, More bleak than many a ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... the fortune to travel in a canal-packet, in the summer solstice, he will readily recognize the faithfulness of the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... are the periods of the equinoxes. The point at which the sun is nearest to the south pole we call the winter solstice, and the opposite point, the summer solstice. The summer solstice is on June twenty-first. At that time the declination of the sun is 23-1/2 deg. north of the equatorial line. It starts to decrease until, six months later, it reaches ...
— The Solar Magnet • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... mythical genius of the sun, in his apparent annual revolution round the earth, to the four stages of human life from infancy to old age, the ancient Magi fixed the natal day of the young God Sol at the winter solstice, the Virgo of the Zodiac was made his mother, and the constellation in conjunction with her, which is now known as Bootes, but anciently called Arcturus, his foster father. He is represented as holding in leash two hunting dogs and driving Ursa Major, or the Great Bear, around the north ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... nearer and the days grew no longer; but in addition to this, a change takes place in the accidents of the cause (its series of diurnal positions), tending to increase the quantity of the effect. When the summer solstice has passed, the progressive change in the cause begins to take place the reverse way, but, for some time, the accumulating effect of the mere continuance of the cause exceeds the effect of the changes in it, and the temperature continues ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... prepares to tune up his unseasonable matins, we are not naturalists enough to determine. But for a mere human gentleman—that has no orchestra business to call him from his warm bed to such preposterous exercises—We take ten, or half after ten (eleven, of course, during this Christmas solstice), to be the very earliest hour, at which he can begin to think of abandoning his pillow. To think of it, we say; for to do it in earnest, requires another half hour's good consideration. Not but there are pretty sun-risings, as we are told, and such like gawds, abroad in the world, in summer ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... the second hour of the Roman day, corresponding nearly to eight o'clock before noon—as the winter solstice was now passed—when Arvina reached the magnificent dwelling of the Consul in the Carinae at the angle of the Caerolian place, hard by the ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... Chiron, who went with the Argonauts, observed the constellations at the time of that famous expedition, and fixed the vernal equinox to the middle of the Ram; the autumnal equinox to the middle of Libra; our summer solstice to the middle of Cancer, and our winter solstice to the middle ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... crown; and that you yourselves from this province Be transported to other lands. God grant you may dwell there Ever as faithful subjects, a happy and peaceable people! Prisoners now I declare you; for such is his Majesty's pleasure!" As, when the air is serene in sultry solstice of summer, Suddenly gathers a storm, and the deadly sling of the hailstones Beats down the farmer's corn in the field and shatters his windows, Hiding the sun, and strewing the ground with thatch from the house-roofs, Bellowing ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... publication of certified circulation and solvency or employed verbally as intellectual stimulation for sympathetic auditors, tacitly appreciative of successful narrative and confidently augurative of successful achievement, during the increasingly longer nights gradually following the summer solstice on the day but three following, videlicet, Tuesday, 21 June (S. Aloysius Gonzaga), sunrise 3.33 a.m., ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... progress of the crops or the drought, I desire to acknowledge an influence which has lent half the charm to my labor. If I were in a court of justice, or injustice, under oath, I should not like to say, that, either in the wooing days of spring, or under the suns of the summer solstice, you had been, either with hoe, rake, or miniature spade, of the least use in the garden; but your suggestions have been invaluable, and, whenever used, have been paid for. Your horticultural inquiries ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the lonely cabin. The prairies, saturated with moisture, refused any longer to drink up the showers. Every hollow and even the slightest depression became a stagnant pool, and when the rains ceased and the sun came out with the heat of the summer solstice, it engendered pestilence, which rose from the green plain that smiled beneath him, and stalked resistless among the dwellers throughout ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... his approach to the northern solstice, the sun, having passed the equator on the 21st of March, reaches the south of Ceylon about the 5th of April, and ten days later is vertical over Point Pedro, the northern extremity of the island. On his return he is again over Point Pedro about the 27th of ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... the contour of this chamber, and leaves a narrow passage between its overlapping head and tail through which the rising waters may overflow at the time appointed, bringing to Egypt "all things good, and sweet, and pure," whereby gods and men are fed. Towards the summer solstice, at the very moment when the sacred water from the gulfs of Syene reached Silsileh, the priests of the place, sometimes the reigning sovereign, or one of his sons, sacrificed a bull and geese, and then cast into the waters a sealed roll of papyrus. This was a written order to do all ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... models. In the fourth century Christmas was placed on the 25th of December because on that date was celebrated the birth of the sun (Natalis Invicti) who was born to a new life each year after the solstice.[3] Certain vestiges of the religions of Isis and Cybele besides other polytheistic practices perpetuated themselves in the adoration of local saints. On the other hand as soon as Christianity became a moral power in {xviii} the world, it imposed itself even on its enemies. ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... that I would appear pedantic to you." said Ebba, "I would tell you what Eric has told me about our Christmas festival. It appears to date back to a remote day before the Christian era. At this season our pagan ancestors celebrated the winter solstice, just as on the 25th of June they did that of summer. The early name of this festival, which we yet preserve, indicates an astronomical idea. It was called Julfest. (the feast of the wheel,) certainly because the sun, the evolutions of which are on the 25th December ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... motive for the study of the stars and planets was the priestly one of accurately fixing the religious festivals. The tropical year being thus ascertained, their tables showed the exact time of the equinox or sun's transit across the equatorial, and of the solstice. From a very early period they had practised agriculture, growing Indian corn and "Mexican aloe." Having no animals of draft, such as the horse, or ox, their farming was naturally of a rude and ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... the grey manor stood out with ghostly vividness in the light of the rising moon. Yet there were times innumerable when they looked like cool retreats for those who wanted rest; when, in the summer solstice, they offered the pleasant peace of the happy fireside. How often had Jean Jacques stood off from it all of a summer night and said to himself: "Look at that, my Jean Jacques. It is all yours, Manor and mills ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... our northern climate may fairly be said to extend from the middle of March to the middle of June. At least, the vernal tide continues to rise until the latter date, and it is not till after the summer solstice that the shoots and twigs begin to harden and turn to wood, or the grass to lose any of its ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... claimed by the folklorists of the Tataukyamu, a priesthood which, controls the New-fire ceremonies at Walpi, and is prominent in the Soyaluna, or the rites of the winter solstice, that the Piba or Tobacco phratry brought the fetishes of that society to Walpi, and there are many obscurely known resemblances between the Mamzrauti and the Wuewuetcimti celebrations in Walpi which appear to support that claim. The Piba phratry is likewise said ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... equinoxes, and where these are noted in the more advanced rituals, they appear to be attachments to observances founded on other considerations—so the Roman Saturnalia, celebrated near the winter solstice, and apparently the plebeian festival of the summer solstice attached to the worship of Fortuna; and the same thing is probably true of the Semitic and Greek festivals that occurred near ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... voyagers. They were near the coast and supplied with everything that could render their life comfortable in that latitude. They could take sleigh-rides and see in the distance the whales enjoying their diversions. The summer solstice was approaching. Since the fifteenth the occupants of the "Alaska" had beheld a new and astonishing spectacle, even for Norwegians and the natives of southern Sweden; it was the sun at midnight touching the horizon without disappearing and then mounting again in the sky. In these high latitudes ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... the solstice of the year, When the sun apace must turn, The seven bright angels 'gan to hear Heaven's twin gates outward yearn: Forth with its light and minstrelsy A lordly troop came speeding by, And joyed to see each cresset sphere ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... be fulfilled; leaves bud, and ever Something is wanting, something falls behind; The flowered Solstice comes indeed, but never That light and lovely summer ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... insular Tyre, founded by Hiram, to which gifts streamed from all countries, especially at the great feasts. The solar character of this deity appears especially in the annual feast of his awakening shortly after the winter solstice (Joseph. C. Apion. i. 18). At Tyre, as among the Hebrews, Baal had his symbolical pillars, one of gold and one of smaragdus, which, transported by phantasy to the farthest west, are still familiar to us as the Pillars of Hercules. The worship of the Tyrian Baal was carried to all ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... this bourne only on the solstice, the tenth day before the Kalends of July, and trudged comfortably to Sarsina, where we put up at the inn, frequented by foot-farers like us. So also at Caesena and Faventia. There we agreed that we had had enough of the highway, as we might encounter ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... requiring a copious diet, will be entered in the insects' "Who's Who" as the destroyer of the Pine-chafer, that magnificent Beetle, flecked with white upon a black or brown ground, who of an evening, during the summer solstice, browses on the foliage of the fir-trees. Though unable to speak with certainty or precision, I am inclined to look upon these devourers of Scarabaeus-grubs as valiant ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... autumnal equinox, and he will see that the shadow thrown by the erect stone would fall straight through the hole of the Men-an-tol. We know that the great festivals of the ancient world were regulated by the sun, and that some of these festive seasons—the winter solstice about Yule-tide or Christmas, the vernal equinox about Easter, the summer solstice on Midsummer-eve, about St. John Baptist's day, and the autumnal equinox about Michaelmas—are still kept, under changed names and with new objects, in our own time. This Men-an-tol may be an old ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva[261] watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac[262] he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice[263] he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His notebooks impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance office ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... 1408, and repaired by A.Ximines in 1756. The line drawn on the true pavement, under the present boarded floor, runs in a direction nearly at right angles to the nave (the nave being nearly east and west). It is only about 30 feet long, and receives the image of the sun, at and near the solstice, in June and July; at other seasons the image is lost on the sides of the cupola. The short diameter of the image in July is about 36 inches. The height of the aperture, through which the ray enters by a window of the cupolina, is 277 feet 4 inches, 9.68 lines French ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... celebration. Some of you may know that the early inhabitants of Great Britain, Ireland, and parts of France were known as Celts, and that their religion was directed by strange priests called Druids. Three times in the year, on the first of May, for the sowing; at the solstice, June 21st, for the ripening and turn of the year; and on the eve of November 1st, for the harvesting, those mysterious priests of the Celts, the Druids, built fires on the hill-tops in France, Britain, ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... the height of our position above the level of the sea, this very interesting fact could not be determined; but, from the cold experienced, at a period so near the summer solstice, the elevation must ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... the symbol of God's pain. The cool breezes of the morning lift the gilt threads from her brow. On that little hill by the city of Florence, where the lovers of Giorgione are lying, it is always the solstice of noon, of noon made so languorous by summer suns that hardly can the slim naked girl dip into the marble tank the round bubble of clear glass, and the long fingers of the lute-player rest idly upon the chords. It is twilight always for the dancing ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... consistency of mental attitude is a terrible vice, for a simple and obvious reason. By an inevitable process like the swaying of the solstice the business world alternates between periods of boom and periods of depression. The wheel is always revolving, fast or slow, round the full cycle of over-or under-production. It is clear that a policy which is right in one stage of the process must necessarily be wrong in the other. ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... the night appeared to be to the two friends! How eager they were to get out of their cabins! When they came on deck in the morning the dawn had for some hours been silvering the eastern horizon. They were nearing the June solstice, the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere, when there is hardly any night along the ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... the most important festivals was held at the summer solstice, or midsummer's eve, in honour of Balder the good, for it was considered the anniversary of his death and of his descent into the lower world. On that day, the longest in the year, the people congregated out of doors, made great bonfires, and watched the sun, which in extreme Northern ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... the whole sky may be filled with visible masses of floating web. All the great movements of gossamers I have observed have occurred in the autumn, or, at any rate, several weeks after the summer solstice; and, like the migrations of birds at the same season of the year, have been in a northerly direction. I do not assert or believe that the migratory instinct in the gossamer is universal. In a moist island, like England, for instance, where the ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... Crab; the fourth sign of the zodiac, which the sun enters about the 21st of June, and commences the summer solstice. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... grass more soft than sleep, And arbute green with thin shade sheltering you, Ward off the solstice from my flock, for now Comes on the burning summer, now the buds Upon the limber vine-shoot ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... replied, after a brief calculation. "You have just six months in all to live from that date. They will offer you up by Tu-Kila-Kila's hut the day the sun reaches the summer solstice." ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... noble insect that sings in the summer solstice from the dazzling dawn all the day long in the fragrant pine-wood. And my song is always the same, regular as the equal course of the season and of the sun. I am the speech of the hot and beaming sun, and when the ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... is Menkalinan, the shoulder of the Charioteer; And, two degrees to the Eastward, the Circle of the Solstice passes by. While, far down in the South, Canopus gleams from the ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low
... but not to be despised, was his punctuality. He always carried two watches,—I doubt if he told why, any more than Dr. Johnson told what he did with the orange-peel,—but probably with reference to this virtue. He was as much to be depended upon at the appointed time as the solstice or the equinox. There was another point I have heard him speak of as an important rule with him; to come at the hour when he was expected; if he had made his visit for several days successively at ten o'clock, for instance, not to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... copious, as the river has there more scope and freedom to spread out its waters than in the high and mountainous lands of Abyssinia. Now, it is manifest that the inundations of the Nile in Egypt always begin when the sun is in the summer solstice, which is in June, while in July the river increases in greater abundance, and in August, when the rains diminish in Abyssinia, the river decreases by similar degrees to its former increase. Hence ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... that in Syene, in Upper Egypt, deep wells were enlightened to the bottom on the day of the summer solstice, and that vertical objects cast ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... need of hurry, for the sun had already passed its northern solstice and was leading the winter south again. Skirting the shores of the bay, where the Mackenzie disembogues into the Arctic Ocean, they entered the mouth of the Little Peel River. Then began the arduous up-stream toil, and the two ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... summer (as the period between autumn and winter is there termed) having set in. An umbrella was quite a necessary appendage at times, to avoid its effects, which are often fatal to Europeans at the time of the summer solstice. ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... between the tropics, to wit, the sun, exercises its influence without those limits, but more feebly, in proportion as the surface of the globe is there more obliquely presented to its rays. This effect, though not great, is not to be neglected when the sun is in or near our summer solstice, which is the season of these easterly breezes. The northern air, too, flowing towards the equatorial parts, to supply the vacuum made there by the ascent of their heated air, has only the small rotary motion of the polar latitudes from which it comes. Nor does it suddenly acquire the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... mellow notes, which, though full and soft, are powerful, and may on a calm morning, before the everyday hum of human toil begins, be heard a mile away, over wood, field, and lake. Toward the summer solstice his notes are on the wane, and when he gives them forth we often hear him utter them as if laboring under great difficulty, and ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... calculated, and well considered of the difference between the Lords of Kissbreech and Suckfist, the court saith unto them, that in regard of the sudden quaking, shivering, and hoariness of the flickermouse, bravely declining from the estival solstice, to attempt by private means the surprisal of toyish trifles in those who are a little unwell for having taken a draught too much, through the lewd demeanour and vexation of the beetles that inhabit the diarodal ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... passengers this richly dressed female brandished lusty epithets. "You Irish mick!" she said. (One would not have believed it possible if he had not heard it.) "That's what I am, and proud of it," said he. The shopping solstice is not all fur coats and pink cheeks. If you watch the conductors in the blizzard season, and see the slings and arrows they have to bear, you will coin a new maxim. The ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... of the king of the dragons, on the mountain of Yu-chun, has on every occasion of drought proved favourable to our prayers offered up there for rain, as duly observed on our sacred registers. From the summer solstice of the present year, a great want of rain has been experienced, on which account we were induced, on the 17th of this moon, to offer up our prayers and sacrifices in person at the said temple. During the very same day, a fall of small rain or dew was observed, and, on ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... very witty and very clever, and quite worthy of the music. The story is taken from an old Dutch legend of rather free conception. The scene is laid in Munich; it takes place at the summer solstice in the far away middle-ages, or, as the author calls it ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... Belisarius. And the emperor, greatly distressed, began in haste to gather an army and ships, and sent orders to the troops of Valerian and Martinus[121] to proceed with all speed. For they had been sent, as it happened, with another army at about the winter solstice, with instructions to sail to Italy. But they had sailed as far as Greece, and since they were unable to force their way any farther, they were passing the winter in the land of Aetolia and Acarnania. And the Emperor Justinian sent word of ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... half the form of beast, Breathes chill and piercing colds from his strong breast, And in a spacious circle takes his round; When him, while in the winter solstice bound, The sun has visited with constant light, He turns his course, ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... nature of the river, neither from the priests nor yet from any other man was I able to obtain any knowledge: and I was desirous especially to learn from them about these matters, namely why the Nile comes down increasing in volume from the summer solstice onwards for a hundred days, and then, when it has reached the number of these days, turns and goes back, failing in its stream, so that through the whole winter season it continues to be low, and until ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... it was found also among the Mexicans; the sole astronomical observations of the Peruvians were made by it; and we read that 1100 B.C., the Chinese found that, at a certain place, the length of the sun's shadow, at the summer solstice, was to the height of the gnomon as one and a half to eight. Here again it is observable, not only that the instrument is found ready made, but that Nature is perpetually performing the process of measurement. Any fixed, erect object—a column, a dead palm, a pole, the angle of ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... where the sun is ever directly overhead. The tropics are generally said to be twenty-three and a half degrees from the equator, which is near enough for ordinary purposes, but it is not quite accurate. When the sun is at the summer solstice, June 21, it is overhead on this tropic, and enters the constellation of Cancer, after which it is named. Nicer calculations than I can follow show that the sun is not precisely overhead at this place every year. In January of this year the tropics were ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... dragged by, each longer and more terrible to endure than the one before it as the heat steadily increased. Summer solstice arrived and there was no escape from the heat, even in the deepest caves. There was no night; the blue sun rose in the east as the yellow sun set in the west. There was no life of any kind to be seen, not even an insect. Nothing moved across ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... finding out where he inhabits, and where he is to be invoked with the greatest success; of attending to times and seasons when the imagination shoots with the greatest vigour, whether at the summer solstice or the equinox, sagaciously observing how much the wild freedom and liberty of imagination is cramped by attention to established rules, and how this same imagination begins to grow dim in advanced age, smothered and deadened by too much judgment. When we talk such ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... endure with singular tenacity. Like their sports, which follow laws of their own, uninfluenced by meteorological considerations, tending to the sedentary games of marbles in the cold, chilly spring, and bursting into base-and foot-ball in the midsummer solstice, strict tradition hands down from boy to boy the well-worn talk. There are still "busters," as in our young days, and the ardent youth upon floating cakes of ice "run bendolas" or "kittly-benders," or simply "benders." In different latitudes the phrase varies,—one-half of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... distinguished American. As I freely walked about the place, photographed the Temple and stood on the circular altar that is supposed to be the centre of the earth and where the Emperor worships alone at the winter solstice, British Sikhs lounged under the trees, army mules munched the luxuriant grass and quartermasters' wagons stood in long rows near the sacred spot where a Chinese would prostrate himself in reverence ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... explained the terrestrial phenomena by saying, that through the gate of horn (first the bull, afterwards the ram,) vivifying fires descended, which, in spring, gave life to vegetation, and aquatic spirits, which caused, at the solstice, the overflowing of the Nile: that through the gate of ivory (originally the bowman, or Sagittarius, then the balance,) and through that of Capricorn, or the urn, the emanations or influences of the heavens returned to their source and re-ascended to their origin; ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... but all depends on the occurrence of need and of danger. As soon as agriculture was engaged in, however, attention must have been fixed on the recurrence of the seasons, and the measures of time afforded by the moon must, at least, have been observed. The summer and the winter solstice, the equinoxes, the new moons, these were to the early cultivator epochs to be observed; and certain annual feasts are found to have come into use in very early times, epochs of man's simplest and earliest calendar, and occasions for tribal ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... always had a tendency to worship the sun, under different names, as the giver of light and life. And their festivals in its honor took place near the winter solstice, the shortest day in the year, when the sun in December begins its upward course, thrilling men with the first distant promise of spring. This holiday was called Saturnalia among the Romans and was marked ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... when the Winter Solstice holds In his diminished path the Sun,— When hope, and growth, and joy are o'er, And all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... usual numerals, the fractional by an S for semissis, the half, and by small horizontal lines for the quarters. Lastly, the sign of the zodiac in which the sun is to be found is named, and the days of the equinoxes and of the summer solstice are determined; for the winter solstice we read, Hiemis initium, the beginning of winter. Next the calendar proceeds to the agricultural portion, in which the farmer is reminded of the principal operations which are to be done within the month. It concludes with the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... explained. It should be photographed, because, to my certain knowledge, Mayer's drawing gives the year, above the figure of the sun which indicates the date of the calendar, quite wrongly; and yet, presuming on his own accuracy, he accuses another writer of leaving out the hieroglyph of the winter solstice. What is much more strange is, that Humboldt's drawing in the small edition of the Vues des Cordilleres is wrong in both points. The drawing in Nebel's great work is probably the best. As to the wax models which Mr. Christy and I bought in Mexico, in the innocence of our ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... young squires who were to be made knights. It was the custom for a youthful prince to receive the accolade with a number of others. (5) "Midsummer festival". The M.H.G. "sunewende" means literally the 'sun's turning', i.e., the summer solstice. This was one of the great Germanic festivals, which the church later turned into St. John's Eve. The bonfires still burnt in Germany on this day are survivals of the old heathen custom. (6) "Hurtling" ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... interesting discovery. He found that these arctic tracts on Mars vary both in extent and distinctness with the seasons of the hemisphere on which they are situated. They attain a maximum development from three to six months after the winter solstice on that planet, and then diminish until they are smallest about three to six months after the summer solstice. The analogy with the behaviour of the masses of snow and ice which surround our own poles is complete, and there has until lately been ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... solstice was over, and the sun gone back towards the equinoctial, when we considered of our next adventure, which was to go over the sea of Zanguebar, as the Portuguese call it, and to land, if possible, upon the continent ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... only to Aquinas among the Continental Schoolmen, in his View of Astronomy, repeats Adelard upon the question of Arim, "where there is no latitude," while (4) Roger Bacon discusses not only the true and the traditional East and West, but even a twofold Arim, one "under the solstice, the other under the equinoctial zone." Arim he finds not to be in the centre of the real world, but only of the traditional. In another passage of the Opus Majus, Bacon, our first English worker in the exact sciences, ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... that the antiquaries of a century or more ago rendered this simple sentence as: "This is a draught exhibiting the time of day, while the sun is passing to and from the winter-solstice." They also made a great muddle of the words: "& HE HIT LET MACAN NEWAN," their rendering being "CHEHITLE AND MAN NEWAN," the translation being supposed to read: "Chehitle and others renewed it, etc." With Mr Brooke's paper is given a large steel ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... (Wednesday) bear the name of Beddou, and this accounts for his being placed in the rank of mythological beings, and discovers the illusion of his pretended existence as a man; since it is evident that Mercury was not a human being, but the Genius or Decan, who, placed at the summer solstice, opened the Egyptian year; hence his attributes taken from the constellation Syrius, and his name of Anubis, as well as that of Esculapius, having the figure of a man and the head of a dog: hence his serpent, ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... about the summer solstice. Along the beaten paths, calcined by the sun, hardened by the passage of frequent feet, we see little circular orifices almost large enough to admit the thumb. These are the holes by which the larvae of the Cigale have come up from the depths to undergo metamorphosis. We see them more ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... originally a separate title-page, and some circulation as a separate tract. Wilkins treats this subject half seriously, half jocosely; he has evidently not quite made up his mind. He is clear that "arts are not yet come to their solstice," and that posterity will bring hidden things to light. As to the difficulty of carrying food, he thinks, scoffing Puritan that he is, the Papists may be trained to fast the voyage, or may find the bread of their Eucharist "serve ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... sprouting verdure shine With the tears of amber dropping from the tassels of the pine. And the morning's breath of balsam lightly brush her sunny cheek— Little recketh Manuela of the tales of Spring they speak. When the Summer's burning solstice on the mountain-harvests glowed, She had watched a gallant horseman riding down the valley road; Many times she saw him turning, looking back with parting thrills, Till amid her tears she lost him, ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... and early winter among pastoral peoples we shall have festivals, like that of Martinmas, for the blessing and purification of flocks and herds when they come in from their summer pasture. In midwinter there will be a Christmas festival to promote and protect the sun's heat at the winter solstice. But in Southern Europe, to which we mainly owe our drama and our art, the festival most widely celebrated, and that of which we know most, is the Spring Festival, and to that we must turn. The spring is to the Greek of to-day the "anoixis," "the Opening," and it was in spring and with rites ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... of courting the Muse in shady bowers; waiting the call and inspiration of Genius ... of attending to times and seasons when the imagination shoots with the greatest vigour, whether at the summer solstice or the vernal equinox ... when we talk such language or entertain such sentiments as these, we generally rest contented with mere words, or at best entertain notions not only groundless but pernicious.' Reynolds's Works, i. 150. On the other hand, in 1773 Johnson recorded:—'Between ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... towards the end of March when the hedgehog awoke. Gradually, since the winter solstice, the shadows of noon, cast from the wooded slope across the meadows in the glen, had become shorter; and now, when the sun reached its meridian, its beams fell directly on the spot where the hedgehog rested among ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... spring equinox being in the centre of that constellation about 3000 B.C. At the time when the constellations were designed, the sun at the spring equinox was near Aldebaran, the brightest star of the Bull; at the summer solstice it was near Regulus, the brightest star of the Lion; at the autumnal equinox it was near Antares, the brightest star of the Scorpion; at the winter solstice it was near Fomalhaut, the brightest star in the neighbourhood of the Waterpourer. These ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... places where he pitched his camp, or of the days which he tarried in this or that. Let it suffice to say that in a month's time he traversed so much space only as an army well equipped might pass over in a single day's march; and that about twenty-one days after the winter solstice the army of the Christians came to a certain place which is named the Casal of Beitenoble, and which in ancient times was, if I err not, a city of the priests. There it tarried some twelve days, ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie |
