"Spire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... heights &c (summit) 210; knob, loma^, pena [U.S.], picacho^, tump^; knoll, hummock, hillock, barrow, mound, mole; steeps, bluff, cliff, craig^, tor^, peak, pike, clough^; escarpment, edge, ledge, brae; dizzy height. tower, pillar, column, obelisk, monument, steeple, spire, minaret, campanile, turret, dome, cupola; skyscraper. pole, pikestaff, maypole, flagstaff; top mast, topgallant mast. ceiling &c (covering) 223. high water; high tide, flood tide, spring tide. altimetry &c (angel) 244 [Obs.]; batophobia^. satellite, spy-in-the-sky. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... velvet sward of the Rectory lawn. The heat of the early June day had given place to the cool air of the evening. The exquisitely delicate colouring from the setting sun flooded the sky overhead and deepened into blues and purples behind the elms and the church spire. A deep peace had fallen upon the world except that from the topmost bough of the tallest elm tree a robin sang, pouring his very heart out in a song ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... buried in the heart of the city, amid the roar and din of commerce. And how different the smoky atmosphere in which the great Dome is enshrouded, to the clear, bright air of Milan, where every delicate spire, every graceful projection with its play of light and shadow, is seen to perfection, and the pure whiteness of the marble is unsullied by the soot and dirt which form, alas! a complete veil to our own Cathedral! What aspect, I thought, ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... lay the grey city wrapped in its veil of smoke, the tall spire of the old church rising in picturesque isolation above the line of the surrounding buildings. It seemed at that moment to stand as a symbol of the life of the Mother Country, a life fenced in by convention, by ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the river as a bridge, and on the plain side it was exceeding high, so that its battlements might be somewhat evened with those of the hill-wall above. So that as they came up to the place they saw little of the town because of the enormity of the wall; scarce aught save a spire or a tall towering ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... the parish church of Bridgewater is said to be the loftiest of Somersetshire, and commands a wide view over the surrounding country. Monmouth, accompanied by some of his officers, went up to the top of the square tower from which the spire ascends, and observed through a telescope the position of the enemy. Beneath him lay a flat expanse, now rich with cornfields and apple trees, but then, as its name imports, for the most part a dreary morass. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... king became more sensitive, and repeated deaths forced upon him the conviction that he too must eventually die, St. Germain not only lost all its charms, but became a place obnoxious to him. From the terrace there could be distinctly seen, a few leagues to the east, the tower and spire of St. Denis, the burial-place of the kings of France. To Louis it suddenly became as torturing a sight as to have had his coffin ostentatiously displayed ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... the Belphin said, gazing reverently across the city to the blue spire of the tower where The Belphin of Belphins dwelt, in constant communication with every member of his race at all times, or so they said. "That is why we were placed in charge of humanity. Someday you, too, may advance to the point ...
— The Blue Tower • Evelyn E. Smith
... espadaiia, f., spire, tower; campanario de —, single-walled belltower; belfry of a single wall with openings for ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... enough to multiply into countless millions in the body of a living fly; and then of the wealth of foliage, the luxuriance of flower and fruit, which lies between this bald sketch of a plant and the giant pine of California, towering to the dimensions of a cathedral spire, or the Indian fig, which covers acres with its profound shadow, and endures while nations and empires come and go around its vast circumference? Or, turning to the other half of the world of life, picture to yourselves the great Finner whale, hugest of beasts that live, or have lived, ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... and pagan were pained and exasperated at the venerable simplicity, the lack of prosody, the vagueness and crudity of the wording of the liturgical hymns. In 1531, Wimpheling, a priest of the diocese of Spire, produced a work, Himni de tempore et de sanctis ... secundum legem carminis diligenter emendati. Leo X., yielding to his own taste and the wishes of the learned innovators who were ardent students of pagan antiquity, ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... not change the ugly square-built temple, with no curves or grace to mark it as a dwelling-place of Gods. Kang walked slowly around this temple, looked long at its staring windows and its tall and ugly spire upon the rooftree which seemed to force its way into the kindly blue sky; then, saddened, sick at heart, he turned homeward, saying deep within him no God whom he could reverence would choose for a dwelling-place a house so lacking in ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... which like sculptured lace lifts its beautiful spire proudly to heaven, and like a giant looks down upon all others? What are those singular buildings whose rounded cupolas and pointed roofs so far exceed in height the surrounding houses? Oh! let the gondola float with the current; your city enchants me, and I ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... a clear, pure, sharp outline, and looked nearer to me than the bulk from which they rose heaven-wards. One star trembled and throbbed upon the very tip of the loftiest, the central peak, which seemed the spire of a mighty temple where the light was worshipped—crowned, therefore, in the darkness, with the emblem of the day. I was lying, as I have said, with this fancy still in my thought, when suddenly I heard, clear, though faint and far away, the sound as of the iron-shod hoofs of a horse, ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... the spire of Salisbury Cathedral. Again fortune favoured him in the matter of privacy, and presently drowsiness descended on his eyelids, which was not fully dispelled till the train ran into the ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... part. He was stationed on horseback, upon one of the mountains of Salces, north of the city; from this point he could see the plain of Roussillon before him, sloping to the Mediterranean. Perpignan, with its ramparts of brick, its bastions, its citadel, and its spire, formed upon this plain an oval and sombre mass on its broad and verdant meadows; the vast mountains surrounded it, and the valley, like an enormous bow curved from north to south, while, stretching its white line in the east, the sea looked like its silver cord. On his right rose that ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... blew into the room, and brought a sort of moist dust with it, which powdered their beards. They looked at the tall trees, which were dripping with the rain, at the broad valley, which was covered with mist, and at the church spire in the distance, which rose up like a gray point ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... into the open air he felt he had lost her irrevocably. The river was now tinted with setting light, the balustrade of Waterloo Bridge showed like lace-work, the glass roofing of Charing Cross station was golden, and each spire distinct upon the moveless blue. The splashing of a steamer sounded strange upon his ears. The "Citizen" passed! She was crowded with human beings, all apparently alike. Then the eye separated them. An old lady making her way down the deck, a young man in ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... star that used to come out in the sky before the rest, near the church spire, above the graves. It was larger and more beautiful, they thought, than all the others, and every night they watched for it, standing hand in hand at a window. Whoever saw it first cried out, "I see the star!" And often they cried out both together, knowing so ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... dashed in amongst the poachers by the palings of his park or paddock on summer evenings; yet whose hands were reasonably white and flexible, as if they handled other things than guns and fishing-rods, and whose eyes, at once clear and meditative, had studied more than the spire of his brother's church and the village street, more than quiet country towns, and loud watering-places, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... from warring, blood-stained, triumphant Holland to the quiet city of Norwich and a quaint gabled house in Tombland almost beneath the shadow of the tall spire of the cathedral, which now for about a year had been the home of Lysbeth van Goorl and Elsa Brant. Here to Norwich they had come in safety in the autumn of 1573 just before the first siege of Leyden was begun, and here they had dwelt for twelve long, doubtful, anxious ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... the Valley there were pointed out to us the Three Brothers, a triple group of rocks, three thousand eight hundred feet high. Cathedral Spire, Sentinel Rock, Yosemite and Lost Arrow Falls, and all the other points of interest that can be seen on ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... energies and some little wealth "to rearing phallic and Solophallic shrines over all the high places around him, and especially in front of Jerusalem, and on and around the Mount of Olives." On each side of the entrance to his celebrated temple, under the great phallic spire which formed the portico, were two handsome columns over fifty feet high, by the side of which were the sun God Belus ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... tragedies of the West Indies was the sinking of old Port Royal, the resort of buccaneers, in 1692. The harbor of Kingstown is commonly supposed to cover the site of the old settlement. There is a tradition that a buoy for many years was attached to the spire of a sunken church in order to warn mariners. Three thousand ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... love which thus towers above us, and gleams like the shining cross on the top of some lofty cathedral spire, does not flash up there inaccessible, nor lie before us like some pathless precipice, up which nothing that has not wings can ever hope to rise, but the height of the love of Christ is an hospitable height, which can be scaled by us. Nay, rather, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... massive piers and arches of the first half of the eleventh century. There is Evreux, with its Norman naves, its tall slender Gothic choir, its strange Italian western tower, and almost more fantastic central spire. All these are noble churches, sharing with those of our own land a certain sobriety and architectural good sense which is often wanting in the churches of France proper. In Normandy as in England, you do not see piles, like Beauvais, ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... in April when he and Gascoyne rode clattering out through Temple Bar, leaving behind them quaint old London town, its blank stone wall, its crooked, dirty streets, its high-gabled wooden houses, over which rose the sharp spire of St. Paul's, towering high into the golden air. Before them stretched the straight, broad highway of the Strand, on one side the great houses and palaces of princely priests and powerful nobles; on the other the Covent Garden, (or the Convent Garden, as it was then called), and the rolling ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... the graven clod Painted and baked. And cromlechs, proving the human heart Has always ached; Till it puffed with blood and gave to art The dream of the dome; Till it broke and the blood shot up like fire In tower and spire. ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... buttes that bordered the opposite shore of the river—solemn sentinels guarding the beauty and purity of this virgin land. Near her were sloping hills, dotted with thorny cactus and other prickly plants, and now rose a bald rock spire with its suggestion of grim lonesomeness. In the southern and eastern distances were the plains, silent, vast, unending. It seemed she had come to dwell in a land deserted by some cyclopean race. Its magnificent, unchanging beauty had ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... graces and virtues, which are commended by God and man. It cannot be secured in a moment. As the edifice is erected by diligently laying one stone upon another, until it finally becomes a splendid temple, piercing the heavens with its glittering spire, so a good name must be built up by good deeds, faithfully and constantly performed, as day after day carries us along amid the affairs ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... ages. The day of their dominion was past. There was a spell over the dark warrior. The Great Spirit had sealed his doom. He had sent strange men to his shores—and a change had come over the face of the land. The thickly settled town—the lofty spire of the house where men assembled to worship the Great Being—the fields, green, and glowing with the deep verdure of spring—the slopes of the hills, made smooth with cultivation—had taken the place of the lofty forest, from which arose the cry of the red warrior, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... time through a fertile undulating bit of country, and nothing of the city can be seen until you are almost in it, except the castle of the Duke of Morningquest, high perched on a hill on the farther side, and the spire of the cathedral, which might not attract your attention, however, if it were not pointed out to you above the trees. When the chime floated over this sparsely peopled tract, filling the air with ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Abbot Islip, who witnessed the erection of Henry VII.'s Chapel. Two hundred and thirty years afterwards Sir Christopher Wren restored Islip's work, and designed the upper portions. The edifice is not yet complete, as the square central tower requires a lofty spire ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... and powerless for all good. The very labyrinth of the grass and flowers of our fields, though dissected to its last leaf, is yet bitten bare, or trampled to slime, by the Minotaur of our lust; and for the traceried spire of the poplar by the brook, we possess but the four-square furnace tower, to mingle its ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... spied, A tree of stateliest growth, and yet undried, Green from the wood: of height and bulk so vast, The largest ship might claim it for a mast. This shorten'd of its top, I gave my train A fathom's length, to shape it and to plane; The narrower end I sharpen'd to a spire, Whose point we harden'd with the force of fire, And hid it in the dust that strew'd the cave, Then to my few companions, bold and brave, Proposed, who first the venturous deed should try, In the broad orbit of his monstrous eye To plunge the ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... picture which his imagination had drawn of the life that was opening before him. Roseate, indeed, were the hues in which his fancy had painted that picture, and foremost of all the objects that it contained was the famous cathedral, with its magnificent spire pointing into the clouds, its richly-sculptured stones, its glorious nave, flanked by noble pillars, and its lofty vaulted roof, echoing to the voices of the choir, or reverberating to the notes of the organ, ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... road led him into a thick forest of oaks and beeches, and so to the crest of a hill overlooking a long open valley with wooded heights beyond. Below him was the pointed spire of some temple or shrine, lying at the edge of the wood, with no houses near it. Farther down he could see a cluster of white houses with the tower of a church in the center. Other villages were dimly visible up and down ...
— The Broken Soldier and the Maid of France • Henry Van Dyke
... that I did not get my way. She was very extravagant. She would have needed much money, and guides are poor people, monsieur—not like your professional cricketers," he said, with a laugh. And then he turned toward the massive wall of mountains. Here and there a slim rock spire, the Dru or the Charmoz, pointed a finger to the stars, here and there an ice-field glimmered like a white mist held in a fold of the hills. But to Michel Revailloud, the whole vast range was spread out as on a raised map, buttress and peak, and dome of snow from the Aiguille ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... above the Valley we come to the beautiful Tenaya Lake, and here the canyon terminates. A mile or two above the lake stands the grand Sierra Cathedral, a building of one stone, sewn from the living rock, with sides, roof, gable, spire and ornamental pinnacles, fashioned and finished symmetrically like a work of art, and set on a well-graded plateau about 9000 feet high, as if Nature in making so fine a building had also been careful that it should be finely seen. From every direction ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... fields before me which we had yet to cross, with the Dieben winding through them under his low, red-brick bridges, and beyond the little clustered village with its grey church spire standing shoulder high above ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... town on parallel streets rise tiers of white stone houses, relieved by spire and tower. On neighboring highest hills are old castles, forts, and ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... traversed; the moonlight enabled the party to push rapidly onward. Mile after mile slipped away; and just as the first dim rays of dawn appeared in the eastern sky, John, who was himself by this time looking white and jaded, pointed eagerly towards a spire rising up against the saffron of the sky ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... against apparently insurmountable difficulties, is given in an anecdote, not generally known out of Russia, connected with a church spire of St. Petersburg, which place is remarkable for its spires. The loftiest is the church of St. Peter and ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... tried to accept his assurances, but it was not easy to imagine such forlorn dinginess changed into dazzling splendour. Just over the throne, and in the centre of the Palace and of the city, rose in gracefully diminishing stages of fantastic woodcarving a tapering phya-sath or spire similar to those surmounting sacred buildings, and crowned with the gilded Htee, an honour which royalty alone shared with ecclesiastical sanctity. The spire, like everything else, had been gilt, but ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... not to be wondered that she wandered long and wearily to very little purpose. Tall trees seemed to encompass her on every side, or where the view was more open, she beheld the distant blue hills rising one behind another; but no village spire or cottage chimney was there to cheer her on her way, and fatigued with the search, and despairing of finding the cattle, she resolved while it was yet light, ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... grow a church before your eyes." Scarce had they spoke, when fair and soft, The roof began to mount aloft; Aloft rose ev'ry beam and rafter; The heavy wall went clambering after. The chimney widen'd, and grew higher, Became a steeple with a spire. The kettle to the top was hoist, And there stood fastened to a joist, But with the upside down, to show Its inclination for below: In vain; for a superior force Applied at bottom stops its course: Doom'd ever in suspense to dwell, 'Tis now no kettle, but a bell. ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... a few minutes at Willesden Junction, our Irish horse pulls harder, and bolts with us for Rugby and some intermediate stations. It is just half-past seven a.m., a beautiful day. There is Harrow on the left, we can see the well-known spire, and we recall the days when we came up for the cricket-match against Eton, and how we all went back in a ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... at sunrise, and for a time we enjoyed the view of the spire of Antwerp Cathedral, wrought of Mechlin lace, as the enamoured Napoleon ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... the left of the church, at the farther end, a tall, square tower. This is the bell tower. There are six bells in it. It was designed to have a spire upon it, but the spire has not yet been built, and perhaps it ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott
... to the King, she opened out her heart to me with natural candour; and whenever in the country she observed the turrets or the spire of a monastery, she sighed, and I saw her beautiful blue eyes ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... this village is oblong, but at the two ends of the roof, spire-like tops are affixed, similar to those on the rest of the huts in the village. They are not ornamental nor useful, but interesting as marking a native characteristic on a house copied from ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... together picture, the critics said, and a new scene which in these days is much to be desired. The manner in which Lacroix had arranged to show both the exterior and interior of the church was a clever hit, every one agreed. Outside, with the clear blue sky for background, the spire of the church was clearly defined, and on a niche just above the main doorway stood an exquisitely carved statue of the patron St. Anne, holding by the hand her little daughter, the Blessed Virgin. And beyond the church and the mass of ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... little nearer than the many spires of Oxford, a building such as to-day we never see save in our rare and half-deserted cathedral country towns. It was the Abbey of Osney. It would have been his landmark, as Hereford is the landmark for a man to-day rowing up to Wye, or the new spire of Chichester for a man that makes harbour out of the channel past Bisham upon a rising tide. And as he passed beneath it (for, of the many branches here, the main stream took him that way) he would have seen a great and populous place ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... declined to its setting, casting long shadows athwart the soil from every pebble, Jean Valjean sat down behind a bush upon a large ruddy plain, which was absolutely deserted. There was nothing on the horizon except the Alps. Not even the spire of a distant village. Jean Valjean might have been three leagues distant from D—— A path which intersected the plain passed a ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... and pointed to the crest of the hill they had just descended. Above the pines circling the lower slope above the bare ledges of rock and outcrop, a column of thick black smoke was rising straight as a spire in the ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... whom he might never again see, when a horseman reined in his steed and bade him mount with him; he would see him on his way. Andrew did, and fell asleep in the stranger's arms. When he awoke he lay on this hill, where the cross has stood ever since, heard the cattle low and saw the spire of his church in the village where the vesper bells were ringing. Many months went by before his fellow-pilgrims reached home. Holy Andrew lived six hundred years ago. A masterful man was he, beside a holy one, who bluntly ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... seek For gems, hid in some forlorn creek: We all pearls scorn, Save what the dewy morn Congeals upon each little spire of grass, Which careless shepherds beat down as they pass: And gold ne'er here appears, Save what the yellow ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... night, and to go to that there beastly churchyard, saving your presence, for 'company,' as she calls it—nice sort of company, indeed. And it is just the same way with storms. You remember that dreadful gale a month ago, the one that took down the North Grove and blew the spire off Rewtham Church. Well, just when it was at its worst, and I was a-sitting and praying that the roof might keep over our heads, I look round for Angela, and can't see her. 'Some of your tricks again,' thinks I to myself; and just then up comes Mrs. Jakes to say that Sam ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... careful look in every direction. It was level, open country all about them, dotted here and there with farmhouses, and in the distance the spire of a village church rose above the clustering houses and ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... entangled in the very centre of the folds of that monstrous anaconda. Their footing was a lap of level not more than thirty yards in length by ten in breadth, strewn with pebbles and bowlders, and showing not one spire of vegetation. Above them rose a precipice, the summit of which they could not see, but which was undoubtedly a mile in height. Had there been armies or cities over their heads, they could not have discovered it by either ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... the truculent new red brick Post Office sneers across the flagged market square at the new Portland-stone Town Hall, while the old thatched corn-market sleeps in the middle and the Early English spire of the Norman church dreams calmly above them. Once, I say, a Sleepy Hollow, but now alive with the tramp of soldiers and the rumble of artillery and transport; for Wellingsford is the centre of a district occupied by a division, which means twenty thousand ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... interested in the question to the Greek Melic poets, and to the many excellent French studies on the subject by such distinguished and well-equipped authors as Remy de Gourmont, Gustave Kahn, Georges Duhamel, Charles Vildrac, Henri Gheon, Robert de Souza, Andre Spire, etc. ...
— Some Imagist Poets - An Anthology • Richard Aldington
... aroused the envy of the whole college by painting the steeple of the First Baptist Church during vacation; and when he finished the job his class numerals were painted in big letters on top of the ornamental knob that tipped the spire. At least, so he announced, and no rival class had the ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... memories; they will jostle us in the market-place, and in the principal streets they will be seen rushing about as if 'on change,' or hurrying to 'catch the train for Paris,' like the rest of the world. A few only have eyes of love and admiration for the noble spire of the church of St. Pierre, which rises above the old houses and the market-place, with even a grander effect than any that the artist has been able to render in the illustration. 'St. Pierre, St. Pierre,' are the first and last words we heard of Caen; the first time, when—approaching ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... the rain patter seems to be the darkness of sound itself. The gloom of the dim and dense line of trees, the thorny bushes scattered in the bare heath like floating heads of swimmers with bedraggled hair, the smell of the damp grass and the wet earth, the spire of the temple rising above the undefined mass of blackness grouped around the village huts—everything seems like notes rising from the heart of the night, mingling and losing themselves in the one sound of ceaseless rain filling ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... its pointed spire, rises blue in the distance; and distant ridges, like receding waves, rise into blueness, one after the other, out of the low-lying mist; the last ridge bluely melting into space. In the midst of it all gleams the Welsh Harp Lake, like a piece of sky that ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... you want an avenue of trees on a drive that don't spread too wide and run up like Lombardi poplar, they'll beat Lombardi poplar all to pieces. And if you crowd them a little, they will grow up like a spire and retain their branches, so you ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... the wreck of the Seagull lay was a peaceful sequestered cove or bay on the coast of Anglesea. The general aspect of the neighbouring land was bleak. There were no trees, and few bushes. Indeed, the spire of a solitary little church on an adjoining hill was the most prominent object in the scene. The parsonage belonging to it was concealed by a rise in the ground, and the very small hamlet connected with it was hid like a rabbit in the clefts of some rugged cliffs. The little church was ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... high above the tree-tops and the windmill, sailing on the aqueduct, sailing through the green corn-lands: the most picturesque of things amphibious. Or the horse plods along at a foot-pace, as if there were no such thing as business in the world; and the man dreaming at the tiller sees the same spire on the horizon all day long. It is a mystery how things ever get to their destination at this rate; and to see the barges waiting their turn at a lock affords a fine lesson of how easily the world may be taken. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that the place was tenantless, till I caught sight of a thin spire of smoke struggling against the downpour. I hoped to come on some gardener or groom from whom I could seek direction, so I skirted the pleasance to find the kitchen door. A glow of fire in one of the rooms cried welcome ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... shake Oblivion's mire And raise Thrall's Hulks. Look! Justice's stooping sun, Seeing in agony's each, a Washington, Breaths life in them, and, over Brooklyn's spire And New York's Babel Tower, they, one by one, Hold Liberty's broading ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... perilled, On a lathy horse, all legs and length, With blood for bone, all speed, no strength; {120} —They should have set him on red Berold With the red eye slow consuming in fire, And the thin stiff ear like an abbey spire! ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... these old stories reminds me that I have something that may interest architects and perhaps some other persons. I once ascended the spire of Strasburg Cathedral, which is the highest, I think, in Europe. It is a shaft of stone filigree-work, frightfully open, so that the guide puts his arms behind you to keep you from falling. To climb it is a noon-day nightmare, and to think of having climbed it crisps all the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... that transformed the world. I awoke shortly after midnight, after seeing the Passion Play at Ober-Ammergau, with these words floating backward and forward in my head like a peal of bells from some distant spire. Backward and forward they went and came, and ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... church service on an elevated, but small platform above the dining place, looking down upon the great chestnut tree, and indeed upon all our possessions. Thus endeavouring to realize the scenes so often seen in England, where the pretty simple church, with its graceful spire, is seen on an elevated place, while the humble cottages, and rose-covered houses ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... the hearers' ears go aching; for thy cry, man, proceedeth from thy aching belly. But now I will set the song again, and tell thee of a lady girdled with fine gold. Beneath the girdle beats a red heart; but her spirit is like a spire of blue smoke, that comes from a fire, indeed, but strains up to heaven. Warmed by that fire, like that smoke I fly up; and so I lie among the ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... not make a particularly good picture from any of its surrounding hills. Its crown—the cathedral—lacks that inspiring vision of soaring, pointing spire that causes the wayfarer leaving Salisbury to turn so many times for a last glimpse of its splendour against the setting sun. Its square and sturdy tower lacks the grace of those western lanterns whose pinnacles are reflected in the waters of Severn ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... of the wind increased to such a degree that several houses on Genesee Street Hill were unroofed, and the spire of the Second Presbyterian Church was thrown ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... prowess of a Quixote tilting against, yea, stouter foes than wind-mills, were I to have commenced with an attack upon external church architecture: this topic let us leave to the fraternity of builders; only asking by what rule of taste an obelisk-like spire, is so often stuck upon the roof of a Grecian temple, and by what rule of convenience gigantic columns so commonly and resolutely sentinel the narrowest of exits and entrances. Let us be more commonly contented, as well we may, with our grand, appropriate, and impressive ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Arundel, that is well known to every one; and Climping, that no one knows, set on a lonely beach and lost at the vague end of an impassable road; and Barlton, and Burton, and Duncton, and Coldwatham, that stand under in the shadow and look up at the great downs; and Petworth, where the spire leans sideways; and Timberley, that the floods make into an island; and No Man's Land, where first there breaks on you the distant sea. I never knew a Sussex man yet but, if you noted him such a list, would answer: 'There I was ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... there," said Thompson, "or I'd offer to show you the way. But you can't miss it. You can see the spire from the window. It's the finest specimen of early Gothic in the north of France. The glass is superb. There's an altar piece by Raphael or Botticelli, I forget which. The screen is late Italian Renaissance, and there's a tomb in ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... in the morning the sun gets up From behind the village spire; And the children dream, that the first red gleam Is the chestnut ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... songs." So the church arises,—in Germany, in France, in England,—solemn, mystical, massive, a type of sorrow, in the form of a cross, with "a sepulchral crypt like the man in the tomb, before the lofty spire pointed to the man who had risen to Heaven." The church is still struggling, and is not jubilant, except in Gregorian chants, and is not therefore lofty or ornamental. It is a vault. It is more like a catacomb than ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... Ebbo excelled with the weapon, and Friedel with the book or tool. For the artist nature was in them, not intentionally excited by their mother, but far too strong to be easily discouraged. They had long daily gazed at Ulm in the distance, hoping to behold the spire completed; and the illustrations in their mother's books excited a strong desire to imitate them. The floor had often been covered with charcoal outlines even before Christina was persuaded to impart the rules she had learnt from her uncle; and her carving-tools ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... It was at Wellington College that he was born, in the Master's Lodge, in a sunny bedroom, in the south-east corner of the house; one of its windows looking to the south front of the college and the chapel with its slender spire; the other window looking over the garden and a waste of heather beyond, to the fir-crowned hill of Ambarrow. My father had been Headmaster for twelve years and was nearing the end of his time there; and I was myself nine years old, and shortly to go to a private school, ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... The building is of Bath stone, and has flying buttresses and a high square tower. In the interior it presents the greatest possible contrast to the old church. Here there is great height, the arches are pointed, the stonework light. The spire is 142 feet high, and the interior 130 feet long by 60 broad. From the interior vault of the roof to the pavement the height is 60 feet. Over the Communion-table is "The Entombment of Christ," an oil-painting by J. Northcote, R.A. To the north of the church ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... the fields. I was surrounded by seductions for such a temperament. The school-house was an old-fashioned, white-washed mansion of wood and plaister, standing on the skirts of a beautiful village. Close by it was the venerable church with a tall Gothic spire. Before it spread a lovely green valley, with a little stream glistening along through willow groves; while a line of blue hills that bounded the landscape gave rise to many a summer day dream as to the fairy land ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... up for eightpence (saving fourpence on a cab, my boy!) and so I found myself in the heart of Birchespool with a base of operations secured. I looked out of the little window of my lodgings at the reeking pots and grey sloping roofs, with a spire or two spurting up among them, and I shook my teaspoon defiantly at them. "You've got to conquer me," said I, "or else I'm man enough ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... refulgent as if cut from some rock of diamond. Nearer, was the Court House, and, beneath it, the Jail; and, behind them both, the dusky expanse of the poplar-planted Champ de Mars. In the midst of the city rose the tin-mailed tower and spire of the French Cathedral, and, at its rear, loomed the neighboring, wall-girt, solemn Seminary of Saint Sulpice. The bright, precipitous roof of the Church of the Recollets, and the spangled canopy of the vast foundation of the Grey Nuns reposed resplendent; and, ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... roll things to the level which you love, That you could stand at ease there and survey The universal Nothing undisgraced By pert obtrusion of some old church-spire I' the distance! "[A] ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... or trees planted in proper earth, moderately watered and covered with a glass bell or close frame of glass, live for months, and even years, with only the original store of air and water. In one of Ward's early experiments, a spire of grass and a fern, which sprang up in a corked bottle containing a little moist earth introduced as a bed for a snail, lived and flourished for eighteen years without a new supply of either fluid. In these ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... great comfort that evening. My men were rather quiet. Perhaps the general calmness was affecting them with kindred thoughts, though an Englishman never shows them. On the left stood the stumpy spire of Bayencourt Church just left by us. On the right lay Sailly-au-Bois in its girdle of trees. Along the side of the valley which ran out from behind Sailly-au-Bois, arose numerous lazy pillars of smoke from the wood fires ...
— Attack - An Infantry Subaltern's Impression of July 1st, 1916 • Edward G. D. Liveing
... with leaden steps through Tenth Street to Broadway, stopped and gazed for a moment on the graceful spire of the church before whose altar Nan would soon stand and perjure herself for money. How could she! He had long felt that in every true man's religion was a supreme belief in himself—in a woman's, ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... one brighter picture of that same season. It was early; so early that the cross of Grace Church had, when I looked up, just caught the morning sun, and for a moment flamed like a crusader's symbol. And then the grace and glory of that exquisite spire became slowly visible. Fret by fret the sunlight stole slowly down, quivering and dropping from each, until at last the whole church beamed in rosy radiance. Up and down the long avenue the street lay in shadow; by some strange ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... the woodman, in his clogs, Bears home the huge unwieldly logs, That, hissing on the smould'ring fire, Flame out at last a quiv'ring spire; When in his hat the holly stands, Old Christmas ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... cliffs and caverns, coming booming over the lashings of the nearer waves, like the roar of artillery. There is a sublimity of desolation on its shores, the effects of a conflict maintained for ages, and on a scale so gigantic. The isolated, spire-like crags that rise along its base, are so drilled and bored by the incessant lashings of the surf, and are ground down into shapes so fantastic, that they seem but the wasted skeletons of their former selves; and we find almost every natural ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... You shall not be the Graue of your deseruing, Rome must know the value of her owne: 'Twere a Concealement worse then a Theft, No lesse then a Traducement, To hide your doings, and to silence that, Which to the spire, and top of prayses vouch'd, Would seeme but modest: therefore I beseech you, In signe of what you are, not to reward What you haue done, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... a glorious spectacle greeted their wondering eyes. In front of them Notre Dame stood out in bold relief, with its magnificent flying buttresses, its two stately towers, massive and majestic, and its slender, graceful spire, springing from the lofty roof at the point of intersection of the nave and transepts. Many other lesser towers and spires rose above churches and chapels that were lost amid the densely crowded houses all about them, but de Sigognac had eyes only ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... mailed paladin, carrying down all before it, and even as the young man was leaping back the top of a gigantic ash on his left, struck by another shell, came crashing to the ground like some tall cathedral spire. Where could they fly? whither bend their steps? Everywhere the branches were falling; it was as one who should endeavor to fly from some vast edifice menaced with destruction, only to find himself in each room he enters in succession confronted with crumbling walls and ceilings. And when, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... statue of the Virgin and Child ascribed with justice to Michael Angelo, and a fine bow-window. We pass the Hospital of St. Jean, turn up an alley full of cobblestones and children, and finally see the canal that passes the houses of the Beguinage. The view is of exceeding charm. The spire of Notre Dame and the apsis may be seen up (or is it down?) stream. A bridge cuts the river precisely where it should; weeping willows to the left lend an elegiac note to the ensemble, and there is a gabled house to the right which ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... of awe; A habitation sober and demure For ruminating creatures; a domain For quiet things to wander in; a haunt 440 In which the heron should delight to feed By the shy rivers, and the pelican Upon the cypress spire in lonely thought Might sit and sun himself.—Alas! Alas! In vain for such solemnity I looked; 445 Mine eyes were crossed by butterflies, ears vexed By chattering popinjays; the inner heart Seemed trivial, and the impresses without Of a too ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... pleasant drive through shaded streets and roads, they came in sight of a church spire, then a few cottages here and there, and were soon in the centre of the village, when Miss Bernard looked inquiringly to ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... all behind me. I leaped sidewise off the path as Gutierrez small light-beam swept it. I ran stumbling through a stubble of boulders, around an upstanding rock spire, back ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... embellishment of Santa Maria del Fiore, a gigantic task which he shared with his greatest predecessors and his most able contemporaries. The task, indeed, was never fully accomplished. The Campanile is not crowned by the spire destined for it by Giotto: the facade has perished and the interior is marred by the errors of subsequent generations. But the Cathedral of Florence must nevertheless take high rank among the ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... martyr Charles had issued, to kneel once more, and then ascended to Heaven; before playhouses, parks, and palaces, wondrous resorts of wit, pleasure and splendour; before Shakespeare's resting-place under the tall spire which rises by Avon, amidst the sweet Warwickshire pastures; before Derby, and Falkirk, and Culloden, where the cause of honour and loyalty had fallen, it might be to rise no more: before all these points in their pilgrimage there was one which the young Virginian brothers ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... of our Village. Stoke Green lies to the right of this lane, and at the distance of one or two fields further on, there is a stile in the corner of one of them, on the left, where a foot-path crosses diagonally. In going through a gap in the hedge, you catch the first peep of the spire of Stoke Church. After passing the field, you come to a narrow lane, overhung with hawthorns; it leads from Salt-Hill to the village of West-End Stoke. Keeping along the lane a short way, and passing ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... where we were standing. On one side lay the blue sea extending to the horizon, below us was the town with its white-walled, straw-thatched buildings, the church with its spire to the left, and before us were the green slopes of the hills sprinkled here and there with clumps of trees, while on the more level spots were to be seen corn-fields and orchards smiling in the rays of the setting sun. Beyond the town was Colway House, a substantial mansion, once ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... leave space for a sloping triangular meadow. Pretty cottages lined it on two sides, and the upper and third side was occupied by a new stone church, expensively simple, a charming shingled spire. Mr. Beebe's house was near the church. In height it scarcely exceeded the cottages. Some great mansions were at hand, but they were hidden in the trees. The scene suggested a Swiss Alp rather than ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... and ever on, till at last the long-desired day came, when, over the crest of a low hill, he made out for the first time the distant spire and towers of the fair Border city. The river Eden in the meadows below lay gleaming in the sunshine ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... Gone is the old Federal Street Theatre. Gone that quaint English alley with the cosey tobacconist's shop which he used to frequent. Gone the hospitable Stackpole where many a time at the "latter end of a sea-coal fire" he heard the bell strike midnight from the spire of the Old South Church! But, though "the spot where many times he triumphed is forgot"—his calm and gentle genius and his hale physique have endured in unabated vigor, so that he has charmed two generations ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... cathedral Has one great spire Tawny in the sunlight. Gargoyles haunt its nave; High up amid its dark-arches Forgotten songs live shadowy. Gold and sardonyx Deck its altars. Its mighty roof Is ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke
... wind on Christmas-eve, and the night is still and bright with stars, or even if the storm be ever so severe, the good people bring out sheaves of corn and wheat from their storehouses. Tying them on slender poles, they raise them from every spire, barn, gatepost, and gable; then, when the Christmas sun rises over the hills, every spire and gable bursts ...
— The Night Before Christmas and Other Popular Stories For Children • Various
... long roofs thus visible to Paula over the window-sill, with their tiers of dormer-windows, rose the cathedral spire in airy openwork, forming the highest object in the scene; it suggested something which for a long time she appeared unwilling to utter; but natural instinct ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... strange, and yet I know not How to condemn it, but in one plain brief word He never comes to Sunday morning chapel. Methinks he teacheth in some Sunday-school, Feeding the poor and starveling intellect With wholesome knowledge, or on the Sabbath morn He loves the country and the neighbouring spire Of Madingley or Coton, or perchance Amid some humble poor he spends the day, Conversing with them, learning all their cares, Comforting them and easing them ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... crossing each other at right angles. From o, centre of base of cube, raise vertical OP, and then from P draw sloping lines to each corner of base a, b, &c., and by means of central lines drawn from P to half base, find the points where the gable roofs intersect the central spire or pyramid. Any other proportions can be obtained by adding to or ...
— The Theory and Practice of Perspective • George Adolphus Storey
... Firth not far away. The road pursued by the coach meanders among all that is best of rural and pastoral scenery, for coaly Annbank, defaced by the exhumed entrails of the earth, is happily on the rear. At a turn of the road, a majestic spire, that of Tarbolton Parish Church, suddenly stands before the view of the traveller, and suggests Eternity even when tolling the hours of Time. Soon the village is reached, and one is in a position to form an idea of eighteenth century ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... it was who first recovered herself. She put out a kindly hand to Helene, who stood wet-eyed and drooping by the window, looking out upon the roofs of Thorn, though well I wot she saw nothing of spire, roof, or pinnacle. ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... central tower rises to the height of two hundred feet in square massiveness, and from this point springs a slender and graceful spire to another hundred feet, so that next to Salisbury, the great archetype of this special class of ecclesiastical architecture, it is the tallest spire in England. Two square towers, richly ornamented, embellish the western ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... such a riot of form and color, as the walled enclosure in which this remarkable edifice and its attendant structures stand. From the center of the marble-paved courtyard rises an enormous, cone-shaped prachadee, round at the bottom but tapering to a long and slender spire said to be covered with plates of gold. It certainly looks like a solid mass of that precious metal, and at daybreak and nightfall, when it catches the level rays of the sun, it can be seen from afar, shining and ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... Front the liberated floods: We will climb the broad-backed hills, Hear the uproar of their joy; We will mark the leaps and gleams Of the new-delivered streams, And the murmuring rivers of sap Mount in the pipes of the trees, Giddy with day, to the topmost spire, Which for a spike of tender green Bartered its powdery cap; And the colors of joy in the bird, And the love in its carol heard, Frog and lizard in holiday coats, And turtle brave in his golden spots; While cheerful cries of crag ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... seen only at that time of autumn. The Sparrow Hills were visible in the distance, with the village, the church, and the large white house. The bare trees, the sand, the bricks and roofs of the houses, the green church spire, and the corners of the white house in the distance, all stood out in the transparent air in most delicate outline and with unnatural clearness. Near by could be seen the familiar ruins of a half-burned mansion occupied by the French, with lilac bushes ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... they differ about throwing out the ballast, the balloon is rent in the quarrel, it sinks with frightful rapidity, and they run the hazard, like the poor Marquis D'Arlande, of being spitted upon the spire of the Invalides, or of being entangled among woods and briers—at last, alighting upon the earth, our adventurers, fatigued and bruised and disappointed, come out of their shattered triumphal car, exposed to the derision of the ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... the Virgin Mary and in compliment to Princess Anne." The site was a piece of ground known as Kemp's Field, and the architect selected was Sir Christopher Wren. The building is in all respects like others of its period, but has a curious spire added later. This has been described as "two hogsheads placed crosswise, in the ends of which are the dials of the clock," and above is a kind of ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... be most advantageous. During several days the tendrils, or internodes, or both, spontaneously revolve with a steady motion. The tendril strikes some object, and quickly curls round and firmly grasps it. In the course of some hours it contracts into a spire, dragging up the stem, and forming an excellent spring. All movements now cease. By growth the tissues soon become wonderfully strong and durable. The tendril has done its work, and has done it in an ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... Lovely green fields and woods slope gradually from the mountain behind, to the still greener lake spread out before it, in whose bosom the white Alps are mirrored. Its picturesque cottages cluster around the neat church with its lofty spire, and the simple inhabitants have countenances as bright and cheerful as the blue sky above them. We breathed an air of poetry. The Arcadian simplicity of the people, the pastoral beauty of the fields around and the grandeur of the mountains which shut it out from the world, ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... and the municipal offices and big buildings in the centre were utterly destroyed, but three buildings stand conspicuously among the ruins. These are two churches, and the Town Hall, with a spire resembling that of a church. The fact that the building next to the latter was leveled utterly, while not a single shell entered the supposed church, indicates that the Russian practice at 5,000 meters was sufficiently ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... against invaders, the English gathered in their harvests, adorned their cities, pleaded, traded, and studied in security. Many of our noblest architectural monuments belong to that age. Then rose the fair chapels of New College and of Saint George, the nave of Winchester and the choir of York, the spire of Salisbury and the majestic towers of Lincoln. A copious and forcible language, formed by an infusion of French into German, was now the common property of the aristocracy and of the people. Nor was it long before genius began to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... will the darkness of our country's crime and suffering be lifted. God will roll back the night of storm, and bring in the morning of joy. Its golden light will gild the city spire, and strike the forests of Maine, and tinge the masts of Mobile; and with one end resting upon the Atlantic beach and the other on the Pacific coast, God will spring a great rainbow arch of peace, in token of everlasting ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... him, he good-naturedly tucked the paper in again, piloted me across, unravelled the end of Washington Street for me, and with much pointing out of landmarks, headed me for my destination, my nose seeking the spire of ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... and brush tangles he pressed, down into soft, boggy gullys deep with dead leaves, across rapid, dark brooks, threads of the river Lisse, over stony ledges, stumps, windfalls, and on towards the break in the trees from which, on clear days, one could see the turret-spire of the Chateau de Nesville. When he reached this point he looked in vain for the turret; the rain hid it. Still, he could judge fairly well in which direction it lay, and he knew that the distance was half ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... feature of Mohammedan architecture, are tall slim towers, in several storeys with balconies, from which the muezzin calls the people to prayer, and terminated by a spire or finial. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Vale of Pickering, the town has a picturesque and pleasant site. At the top of the market-place where the ground becomes much steeper stands the church, its grey bulk dominating every view. From all over the Vale one can see the tall spire, and from due east or west it has a surprising way of peeping over the hill tops. It has even been suggested that the tower and spire have been a landmark for a very long time, owing to the fact that where the hills and formation of the ground do not obstruct the view, or make road-making difficult, ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... century writers greatly, for they wrote it "Jermyn," "Germain," "Germaine," and even "Germin." St. James's Church, Wren's handiwork, is all that remains from the age of Anne, with "the steeple," says Strype, fondly, "lately finished with a fine spire, which adds much splendor to this end of the town, and also serves as a landmark." Perhaps it sometimes served as a landmark to Richard Steele, reeling happily to the home in "Berry" Street, where his beloved Prue awaited him. St. James's ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... revels of summer's returned aristocracy. Because, moreover, there is a far stronger effect of life, home and cheer from the broad-leaved evergreens which, in duly limited numbers, assemble with and behind these, and from the lither sorts of conifers that spire out of the network and haze of living things in winter sleep. The plantings at the garden's and dwelling's front being properly, of course, lower than those farther back, I see among them, in this ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... sunshine and hot summer; lights and shadows chasing across the downs, the black slopes of Charlton forest on the one side, parks and green fields and old brown houses, sloping to the silver Solent, upon the other; and in the centre of the plain, by Bosham water, the spire of Chichester Cathedral piercing the golden air. Paddock and lawn and the stands were filled until about two in the afternoon. Then the gaps began to show to those who were concerned to watch. Especially about ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... rather damp. However, I cross the road and get on to the grass and we walk along, and I sing as I always do when I'm alone, until we come to the open place where you can see the whole of London beneath you on a clear day. Hampstead Church spire there, Westminster Cathedral over there, and factory chimneys about here. There's generally a haze over the low parts of London; but it's often blue over the park when London's in a mist. It's the open place that the balloons cross ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... I've heard of that lives in France, and when folks attack it it defends itself. I've just been defending myself. I think I've shown you that you're no brand-new extra-gilt angel on the top of a spire. ...
— Plays of Near & Far • Lord Dunsany
... surrounded by fields and lanes, whose luxuriant growth of bank and hedge suggest a rich humidity of soil. In summer there is a remarkable abundance of ragged-robins by the wayside, with honeysuckles and wild-roses clustering above them in glorious profusion; here and there rises the stately spire of a foxglove. Ferns of exquisite grace and loveliness dispute the right of existence with brambles and grasses and moss; and golden grain comes close to the churchyard wall. Standing as it does in such isolation, it is surprising to find that the ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... us were not merely perpendicular, but curved outwards at the top, so that ascent was out of the question. Close to us was the high thin pinnacle of rock which I believe I mentioned earlier in this narrative. It is like a broad red church spire, the top of it being level with the plateau, but a great chasm gaping between. On the summit of it there grew one high tree. Both pinnacle and cliff were comparatively low—some five or six hundred feet, ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... receded from around it for yards—to an immense boulder in its base—by far the largest stone I ever saw in an Old Red conglomerate. The mass is of a rudely rhomboidal form, and measures nearly twelve feet in the line of its largest diagonal. A second huge pebble in the same detached spire measures four feet by about three. Both have their edges much rounded, as if, ere their deposition in the conglomerate, they had been long exposed to the wear of the sea; and both are composed of an earthy amygdaloidal trap. I have stated elsewhere ["Old ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller |
