"Spire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... burnished roof of copper flashed far across the deep. The high street winds from the cathedral precinct past an old house of Queen Mary Stuart, past ruined chapels of St. Leonard's, and the university chapel with its lovely spire, down to the shores of the bay; and along the bay run the famous "links," where the royal and ancient game has its cradle and home. Other links, as Prestwick, or North Berwick, may vie with those of St. Andrews in extent, or in the smoothness of the putting greens, or ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... and expensive monuments in all sorts of fantastic shapes—obelisk-wise, pillar-wise, etc. In speaking of Gretna Green, I forgot to mention that we visited the churchyard. The church is like a huge house; indeed, so are all the churches, with a steeple, not a square tower or spire,—a sort of thing more like a glass-house chimney than a Church of England steeple; grave-stones in abundance, few verses, yet there were some—no texts. Over the graves of married women the maiden name instead of that of the husband, 'spouse' instead of 'wife,' and the place ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... white Cape Hyacinth, or Spire Lily. A hardy, summer-flowering, bulbous plant 3 ft. to 4 ft. in height, gracefully surmounted with from twenty to fifty pendent, bell-shaped snow-white flowers. Thrives in any position and equally suitable for indoor or ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... distinct people in various parts of the empire. They are nearly all Mohammedans, and the conversion of one of them to Christianity is a very rare occurrence. My attention was called to their mosques in the villages we passed, the construction being quite unlike that of the Russian churches. A tall spire or minaret, somewhat like the steeple of an American church, rises in the center of a Tartar mosque and generally overlooks the whole village. No bells are used, the people being called to prayer by the voice of ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... the city's busiest life, Not a stone's throw from the deadly strife Of the metropolitan mart, Old Trinity stands; her spire, like a hand, Points ever upward; her chimes demand From the ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... white marble 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 seems to have entered the ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... traveller! The castle was, to my eye, of all castles which I had seen, the most elevated in its situation, and the most difficult of access. The clouds of heaven seemed to be resting upon its battlements. But what do I see yonder? "Is it the top of the spire of Strasbourg Cathedral?" "It is, Sir," replied the postilion. I pulled off my travelling cap, by way of doing homage; and as I looked at my watch, to know the precise time, found it was just ten o'clock. It was worth making a minute of. Yet, owing to the hills before—or rather to those beyond, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... took refuge in its steeple, whither they were quickly followed. Only by dejected appeals and a promise not to injure Gustavus Vasa did they succeed in escaping from the tower, and the Dalmen, thinking that some of them might remain concealed in the narrow spire, shot their arrows at it from every side. For more than a hundred years after some of these arrows remained sticking in the old ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... search of the ore, had come to grief just as the ore was found. It lay now on the crater floor with its nose bashed into an upflung spire of rock. Wrecked beyond repair. Save for the pre-arrangement with the Planetara, the Grantline party would have been helpless here on the Moon. Knowledge of that—although no one ever suspected but that the Planetara would come safely—served to add to the men's depression. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... the most prominent is the Roman Catholic Church, a white frame building with two great towers; Mr. Coan's native church with a spire comes next; and then the neat little foreign church, also with a spire. The Romish Church is a rather noisy neighbour, for its bells ring at unnatural hours, and doleful strains of a band which cannot ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... the garden. It was laid out in the old French style, with straight walks, pyramids of box, and white painted stone figures: satyrs and goddesses peeped through the green foliage. You now caught sight of a high tower with a spire; and soon the whole of the old mansion presented itself to view. The water was conveyed away from the broad moats, where the weeping willows with bowed heads and uncovered roots stood in the warm sunshine. A number of work-people were ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... and warehouses in the front, with muddy streets. Behind, many buildings, grey-weathered ones and white-painted ones topped with many chimneys, and towering here and there a smoke stack or graceful spire or dome with minarets. Between are seen spreading tree tops, too. All these in strange confused order fill all the horizon there with the exception of one space, through which in June can be seen the 11:30 p. m. setting sun. And in this open space on clear evenings, which by the way, in June-July ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... woman, Maria Bresciano, attended the signorina and her child, but unfortunately the mother died, and her death is registered both by the civil authorities in the Minadoi section here" (lifting a small house bodily off the map), "and by the ecclesiastical here" (he touched another spire). ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... villages were quaint and picturesque, but the pave road was rough and tiring. Bailleul made a delightful break in the journey. The old Spanish town hall, with its tower, the fine old church and spire and the houses around the Grande Place, will always live in one's memory. The place is all a ruin now, but then it formed a pleasant home and meeting place for friends from many parts. We skirted the borders of Belgium and arrived at Armentieres in ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... very centre of the roof, on four tall pillars of pine that were fluted with a gouge, and loaded with mouldings. On the tops of the columns was reared a dome or cupola, resembling in shape an inverted tea-cup without its bottom, from the centre of which projected a spire, or shaft of wood, transfixed with two iron rods, that bore on their ends the letters N. S. E. and W, in the same metal. The whole was surmounted by an imitation of one of the finny tribe, carved in wood by the hands of Richard, and painted what he called a scale-color. ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 ...
— The Blue Tower • Evelyn E. Smith
... congregation consists upon an average of from one hundred to one hundred and thirty persons. It is a most gratifying sight to see the Colonists, in groups, direct their steps on the Sabbath morning towards the Mission house, at the ringing of the bell, which is now elevated in a spire that is attached to the building. And it is no small satisfaction to have accomplished the wish so feelingly expressed by a deceased officer of the Company. "I must confess, (he observed) that I am anxious to see the first little Christian church and steeple of wood, slowly ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... current. No scheme of colonisation has ever been designed or thought of by them; for it is only near its source, as we have seen, that settlements exist. In the Chaco no white man's town ever stood upon its banks, nor church spire flung ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... go whirling by. I followed them, under the phantom sphere Of the pale moon, along the Avon's near And nimbused flowing, followed to his bier— Who had evoked them first with mighty eye. And as I gazed upon the peaceful spire That points above earth's most immortal dust, I could have asked God for His starry Lyre Out of the skies to play my praise upon. I could have shouted, as, O Wind, thou must, "Here lies Humanity: kneel, and ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... afterwards be discovered by its shrivelled and lean body that never will make right good Malt; or if it is mown at a proper time, and if it be housed damp, or wettish, it will be apt to heat and mow-burn, and then it will never make so good Malt, because it will not spire, nor come so regularly on the floor as ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous
... spires were then built; among which was that of old St. Paul's Cathedral, more than five hundred feet high, and which was destroyed by fire, A. D. 1561. The spire of Oxford Cathedral is also of this style. Early English spires are generally what are called Broach spires, and spring at once from the external face of the walls of the tower, without any ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... precipitate growth, and gain a years advance; but this is erroneous. Now if you gather them in moist weather, lay them a drying, and so keep them till you sow, which may be as soon as you please after Christmas. If they spire out before you sow them, be sure to commit them to the earth before the sprout grows dry, or else expect little from them: And whenever you sow, if you prevent not the little field mouse, he will be sure to have the better share. ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... looked straight ahead. Before me lay the village, a cluster of white houses embowered in trees. It was sunset; the rain had washed the leaves and laid the dust in the road; the air was exquisitely fragrant and of uncommon softness; the white spire of the village church, flanked by a long line of poplars, was gilded with a sunbeam, but the lowly roofs of the villagers were bathed in the radiant twilight that had deepened under the western hills. Cattle were lowing in the meadows; the crickets chirped everywhere; a barbed swallow clove the air ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... with Peggy in riding Star the rest of the journey was passed. They came into Lancaster the next day, the tall spire of the court-house with the two faces of its clock being the first thing to be spied. The town swarmed with soldiers. It seemed to Peggy that there was one on every corner. In truth Lancaster was in fair way toward being a military camp. The Americans found much difficulty in disposing ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... of a long day's journey, while the twilight gave a mysterious hue to a scene in itself singular and stately.—Glistening spire on spire; massive piles, which in the deepening haze might be either prisons or palaces; vast ranges of buildings, gloomy or glittering as the partial ray fell on them; with the solemn beauty of the Invalides on one wing, the light and lovely elegance of the St Genevieve ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... himself the pleasure of seeing her; and he would often walk half-way over to the parsonage, and then back again, as if to whet his appetite. Indeed there was one corner of the road, whence he could see the church-spire wedged into a crevice of the valley between sloping firwoods, with a triangular snatch of plain by way of background, which he greatly affected as a place to sit and moralise in before returning homewards; and the peasants ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and perfume, Brimful of promise of midsummer weather, When bees and birds and I are glad together, Breathes of the full-leaved season, when soft gloom Chequers thy streets, and thy close elms assume Round roof and spire the semblance of green billows; Yet now thy glory is the yellow willows, The yellow willows, full ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... open earth with its corn and grass more dear to him and wonderful. But when he left the park, and crossed the Hampstead Road into a dreary region of dwellings crowded and commonplace as the thoughts of a worshipper of Mammon, houses upon houses, here and there shepherded by a tall spire, it was hard to believe that the spring was indeed coming slowly ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... hastily climbed the hill and turned across the dark-green fields, following the black cinder-track. In the distance, across a shallow dip in the country, the small town was clustered like smouldering ash, a tower, a spire, a heap of low, raw, extinct houses. And on the nearest fringe of the town, sloping into the dip, was Oldmeadow, the Pervins' house. He could see the stables and the outbuildings distinctly, as they lay towards him on the slope. Well, he would ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... and stunn'd I lay; till casting round My half unconscious gaze, I saw the foe Borne on a car of roses to the ground, By volant angels; and as sailing slow He sunk the hoary battlement below, While on the tall spire slept the slant sunbeam, Sweet on the enamour'd zephyr was the flow Of heavenly instruments. Such strains oft seem, On star-light hill, to soothe ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... were also the wood-pigeons of the elms in the Bishop's garden, who held themselves up proudly on the borders of the terraces, going slowly, as if walking merely to show themselves off. Sometimes, half lost in the blue sky, looking scarcely larger than a fly, a crow alighted on the point of a spire to smooth its wings. The old stones themselves were animated by the quiet working of the roots of a whole flora of plants, the lichens and the grasses, which pushed themselves through the openings in the walls. On very stormy days ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... trespass; but those invited there found in this quiet sun-trap many headstones, bearing names and dates and epitaphs. Close by, a path, along which members of the family went often to and fro, led to yet another quiet corner, where a well-known spire showed above the trees. From this last there sounded at intervals the music of bells, chiming, or ringing solemnly, and beneath its shadow slept other folk, who had once walked the world with these same dogs of many generations, earning epitaphs ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... some, perchance, will bidde you off To Conventre, or Yorke, or Jericho; But be not you, my booke, abashed by scoff, For I will teach you where you boun to go,— Which is in Gloucestershire, there unto Bisley, Where the church spire is spied long afarre; It is not either uncouth, square, or grisly, But soareth high, as if to catch a starre; Where shall the brother of the Christian Yeare, Keble, hereafter tend the seven springs, Above whose fountains doth The ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... dark pines give it this sombre hue, but in reality the waters are clear as crystal. Beyond these groves, still looking south, you discover the woods about Wardour Castle, and amongst them the silvery gleam of another sheet of water. To the south-west is the giant spire of Salisbury, which since the fall of Fonthill Tower now reigns in solitary stateliness over these vast regions of down and desert. Stourton Tower presents itself to the north, whilst to the west, in the extreme distance, several high hills ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... 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 and ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... Zaehringen, from whom the present Grand Duke is descended, contributed largely to the vast expense; but it would probably have been unfinished, like many similar grand structures, if the people of Freiburg had not taxed themselves to the utmost, and made great sacrifices to insure its completion. The spire is of beautiful fret-work, nearly four hundred feet high. The interior is grand, and something about it gives the beholder a peculiar feeling of solemnity—perhaps the thought that men have worshipped there for ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... ears a long drawn out cry. 'Li-i-isten!' was echoed back with a sort of desperation in the distance. 'Li-i-isten!' died away somewhere far, far away. I started. A tall golden spire flashed on my eyes; I recognised the fortress of St. ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... which a small stream made a beautiful bend and then wound its way through a long reach of soft meadow scenery. The church was surrounded by yew trees, which seemed almost coeval with itself. Its tall Gothic spire shot up lightly from among them, with rooks and crows generally wheeling about it. I was seated there one still sunny morning watching two laborers who were digging a grave. They had chosen one of the most remote and neglected corners of the churchyard, ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... a room nearly all window on a second floor in the Marche aux oeufs, just under the shadow of the gigantic spire which rings a fragment of melody every seven minutes and a half—and the whole tune at ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... indeed, it was difficult to get a comprehensive view of it, because the woods approached so closely that the traveller came upon it almost unawares. From every other side the outlines of the Abbey were singularly beautiful. Here a small spire sharply cut the sky, or a graceful point of roof told of a chapel or high-pitched hall; there, half frowning, half friendly, a mass of creeper-clad, grey wall looked capable of withstanding a siege. In some places solid pieces of masonry spoke of comparatively ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... close together, their elbows resting upon the broken wall, and almost touching. Beyond the abyss and darker forest they could see the more vivid green and regular lines of the plane-trees of Strudle Bad, the glitter of a spire, or the flash of a dome. From the abyss itself arose a cool odor of moist green leaves, the scent of some unseen blossoms, and around the baking vines on the hot wall the hum of apparently taskless and disappointed bees. There was nobody in sight in the forest road, no one working in the ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... country. Purple hills hemmed in a broad, green, undulating plateau, scored across and across by the stone walls of the north, and all dappled with the shadows of rolling leaden clouds with silver fringes. Miles away a church spire stuck like a spike out of the hollow, and the smoke of a village dimmed the trees behind. No nearer habitation could I see. I have mentioned a hamlet which we passed in the spring-cart. It lay hidden behind some hillocks to the left. My landlady told me it was better than ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... the flood reclining, Ruined arch and wall and broken spire, Down beneath the watery mirror shining, Gleam and flash in flakes ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... page 62 may be his. The tablet to his memory has long since been destroyed, and every vestige of his tombstone has disappeared, but nature, not forgetting his generous gifts to the old church, has sent up a spire-shaped cedar to mark his grave. Colonel Hamtramck died April 21, 1858, ...
— A Virginia Village • Charles A. Stewart
... shilling between his teeth to make sure that it is a good one. "Marnin!" he says savagely—and turns his back on us, as if we had offended him. A curious product, this, of the growth of civilization. If I didn't see a church spire at Underbridge, I might suppose that we had lost ourselves on ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... these two thunderbolts, which I Have got for thee, the Moist and Dry. Here Siva's dart to thee I yield, And that which Vishnu wont to wield. I give to thee the arm of Fire, Desired by all and named the Spire. To thee I grant the Wind-God's dart, Named Crusher, O thou pure of heart, This arm, the Horse's Head, accept, And this, the Curlew's Bill yclept, And these two spears, the best e'er flew, Named the Invincible ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... ran riot along the streets. Here and there a window was already lighted up; and the noise of men-at-arms making merry over supper within came forth in fits and was swallowed up and carried away by the wind. The night fell swiftly; the flag of England, fluttering on the spire-top, grew ever fainter and fainter against the flying clouds—a black speck like a swallow in the tumultuous, leaden chaos of the sky. As the night fell the wind rose, and began to hoot under archways and roar amid the tree-tops in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... state. The old time factory bell has not entirely given way to the steam whistle, nor the simple village spire to the more pretentious ecclesiastical tower of to-day, yet the energizing force of material prosperity has quickened the blood in nearly every hamlet, modernized the old, or built up a new, so that ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... presents something like a frozen dream. There will be time enough to trace out the analogy while waiting the summons to breakfast. Seen through the clear portion of the glass, where the silvery mountain peaks of the frost scenery do not ascend, the most conspicuous object is the steeple, the white spire of which directs you to the wintry luster of the firmament. You may almost distinguish the figures on the clock that has just tolled the hour. Such a frosty sky, and the snow-covered roofs, and the long vista of the ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... submitted to his eye." Stirling, in his Annals of Spanish Artists, says, that of no prince are recorded more sayings which show a refined taste and a quick eye. He told the Burghers of Antwerp that, "the light and soaring spire of their cathedral deserved to be put under a glass case." He called Florence "the Queen of the Arno, decked for a perpetual holiday." He regretted that he had given his consent for the conversion of the famous mosque of Abderahman at Cordova into a cathedral, when ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... great drawing-room I found the young ladies, who hastened to procure me supper; and I still remember that waiter of every species of edibles,—that smiling landscape above which rose the spire-like neck of a decanter! These incessant "bills of fare" will, I fear, revolt some readers! But these are my memoirs; and memoirs mean recollections. I have forgotten a dozen battles, but still remember that decanter-phenomenon ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... which stood a weeping-willow, budding with fresh spring foliage. Opposite were houses of various pretentious, and sheer behind them rose the steep hill, with the church nearly at the summit, the noble spire tapering high above, and the bells ringing out a cheerful chime. The mist had drawn up, and all was fresh ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... quaint, undignified tartan of a myriad small fields dies out into the distance; the strips blend and disappear; and the dead flat lies forth open and empty, with no accident save perhaps a thin line of trees or faint church spire against the sky. Solemn and vast at all times, in spite of pettiness in the near details, the impression becomes more solemn and vast towards evening. The sun goes down, a swollen orange, as it were into the sea. A blue-clad peasant rides home, ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... girl, he tells her to build only a spire, for "modesty beseemeth a woman." Well for Sir Asker that he did not live in our day of clamoring suffragists. He would have "views" without doubt. But no such things troubled him while he battled in foreign lands all summer. It was autumn when he returned and saw from afar the swell behind ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... like a cloud o'er her brain. You gaze through a sort of traditional mist, And behold a mirage of God's laws which exist But in fancy. God made but one law—it is love. A law for the earth, and the kingdoms above, A law for the woman, a law for the man, The base and the spire of His intricate plan Of existence. All evils the world ever saw Had birth in man's breaking away from this law. God cancels a marriage when love flies away. "Till death do us part" should be altered to say, "Till disgust or indifference part us." ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... stand in that wide place Where love is frozen in marble, spire on spire, A snow-white nightingale with a heart of fire Soaring in space. We gaze, together, into the shining pool To catch the soul of beauty unaware Finding only the peaceful body there Of beauty drowned ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Marjorie Allen Seiffert
... 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 with nothing ruinous in it, all well ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... no skeptic's puny hands, While near the school the church-spire stands, Nor fears the bigot's blinded rule, While near ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... he quitted the near view, and let his eye run along the edge of the horizon, until it rested upon a small speck, which he knew to be the lofty spire of Saint Paul's Cathedral. If, as he supposed, the Fair Geraldine was in attendance upon Anne Boleyn, at the palace at Bridewell, she must be under the shadow of this very spire; and the supposition, whether correct or not, produced such quick and stifling emotions, ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the afternoon of the next day smoke was observed issuing from the upper part of the steeple of the Tron Church. The steeple was built of timber, covered with lead. There is never smoke but there is fire; and at last the flames burst forth. The height of the spire was so lofty that all attempts to extinguish the fire were hopeless. The lead was soon melted, and rushed in streams into the street below. At length the whole steeple fell ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... three sides by coral reefs; some fumaroles to the northward, and a hot spring, were the only vestiges of the forces that had long since originated it. Now and then a faint quiver of earthquake would be sensible, and sometimes the ascent of the spire of smoke would be rendered tumultuous by gusts of steam; but that was all. The population of the island, Montgomery informed me, now numbered rather more than sixty of these strange creations of Moreau's art, not counting the smaller monstrosities which lived ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... dead leaves ran riot along the streets. Here and there a window was already lighted up; and the noise of men-at-arms making merry over supper within came forth in fits and was swallowed up and carried away by the wind. The night fell swiftly: the flag of England, fluttering on the spire top, grew ever fainter and fainter against the flying clouds—a black speck like a swallow in the tumultuous, leaden chaos of the sky. As the night fell the wind rose, and began to hoot under archways and roar amid the tree-tops in the valley below ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... sparkling flood, When Phoebus rears his awful brow, From lengthening lawn and valley low The troops of fen-born mists retire. Along the plain The joyous swain Eyes the gay villages again, And gold-illumined spire; While on the billowy ether borne Floats the loose lay's jovial measure; And light along the fairy Pleasure, Her green robes glittering to the morn, Wantons on silken wing. And goblins all To the damp dungeon shrink, or hoary hall, Or westward, with impetuous flight, Shoot to ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... mostly involved in a siesta. There was not a creature in the little church of Saint Martha, which I made a point of visiting before I returned to the station, and which, with its fine romanesque side-portal and its pointed and crocketed gothic spire, is as curious as it need be in view of its tradition. It stands in a quiet corner where the grass grows between the small cobble-stones, and you pass beneath a deep archway to reach it. The tradition relates that Saint Martha tamed with her own hands and attached to her girdle a dreadful dragon ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... abruptly behind the red roofs of the little town crowds the quaint High Street against the wall which defends it from the sea. Beyond the sea-wall there curves for miles in a vast and regular sweep the barren beach of shingle, with the village of Brenzett standing out darkly across the water, a spire in a clump of trees; and still further out the perpendicular column of a lighthouse, looking in the distance no bigger than a lead pencil, marks the vanishing-point of the land. The country at the back of Brenzett is low and flat, but the bay is fairly well sheltered from ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... along and lift it off to take a peep at the curious animals underneath. For, truly, they are curious animals, and build some curious nests. I like, as well as you, to get up above my neighbors now and then, and look down upon them. I never see a tall chimney or church spire without wishing there was a spiral staircase around the outside of it, from which to view the landscape o'er. In fact, to be candid, if I had happened to live a few thousand years ago, I am afraid I should have taken stock in the Babel enterprise, ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... galloping, Joris and I, Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky; The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh, 'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff; 40 Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white, And "Gallop," gasped Joris, "for Aix ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... this that shows no sign of human habitation, that knows no village, nor any distant spire? The crops are like ours at home—wheat, lucerne, and the flowering bean that perfumes the air with its white blossoms. But there is an excess of light in the sky and, in the distance, an extraordinary clearness. And then these fertile plains, that might be those ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... or Lady Carr, or me. Just think how happy she must be! The Ball-Room, with its painted sky Where heavy angels seem to fly, Is a dull place; its size and gloom Make them prefer, for drawing-room, The Library, all done up new And comfortable, with a view Of Salisbury Spire between the boughs. When she had shown me through the house, (I wish I could have let her know That she herself was half the show; She is so handsome, and so kind!) She fetch'd the children, who had dined; And, taking one in either hand, Show'd me how all the grounds were ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... their walks abroad, find themselves within the confines of the parish of St. Bride's, with its church built by Wren shortly after the great fire, and its queer pointed steeple, like a series of superimposed tabourets overtopped with a needle-like spire? ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... remarkable. 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, ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... yonder, boys, just beyond the spire of the Presbyterian Church! Don't you think it's showing brighter in that quarter? Yes, sir, the fire lies over that way, ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... a ruddy patch in the road showed where tile or chimney-pot had been swept off and dashed to pieces. The sign at the village inn had been torn from its hinges, and farther on Tom came upon the Vicar examining the great gilt weather-cock on the little spire at the top of the ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... destined, perhaps, to end his days. Forty or fifty mud-plastered log huts in various stages of decay and half buried in snow-drifts over which ice windows peer mournfully, a wooden church pushed by time and climate out of the perpendicular, with broken spire and golden crosses mouldering with rust—on the one hand, a dismal plain of snow fringed on the horizon by a dark pine forest; on the other, the frozen river Yana, across which an icy breeze moans mournfully—such is Verkhoyansk as we ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... blue grass is cultivated by some farmers for pastures. If well set, and not eaten down in summer, blue grass pastures may be kept green and fresh till late in autumn, or even in the winter. The English spire grass has been cultivated with success ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... starting but Robbie. 'Afraid you shall fall?' Ah! don't be a craven, be bravest of all. Now up and now down, now away to yon spire: Go on: don't be frightened: ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... quietly than he had anticipated, might possibly know more than he gave her credit for knowing. He had been watching her fingers since they sat down in the summer-house, and his sharp eyes saw that they were as steady as the spire of the cathedral above the trees—he knew from that that she was neither frightened ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... their rich harvest, yet still presenting a yellow surface to the eye; and ever and anon some bright patch of green, demanding the gaze as if by a lingering spell from the past spring; while, here and there, spire and hamlet studded the landscape, or some lowly cot lay, backed by the rising ground or the silent woods, white and solitary, and sending up its faint tribute of smoke in spires to the altars of Heaven. The river was ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... must I then escape?" "No," exclaimed the knowing shape, "You shall perish by Lynch-Law." Through his skull he struck a claw, On the tempest burst a wail, Through the bars a serpent-tail, Flashing like a lightning spire, Seemed to set the cell on fire; Far and wide was heard the clang, Through the whirlwind as they sprang. Many a year the sulphurous fume Stung the nostril ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... spire which could be seen afar off and its bells which called the faithful to worship, formed the social center of the parish. Here on Sundays and holy days the people assembled for the morning and evening services. During the interval between ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... innocent walk on its platform,—with its neat carriages, metropolitan hotels, precious old college-dormitories, its vistas of elms and its dishevelled weeping-willows; Hartford, substantial, well-bridged, many—steepled city,—every conical spire an extinguisher of some nineteenth-century heresy; so onward, by and across the broad, shallow Connecticut,—dull red road and dark river woven in like warp and woof by the shuttle of the darting engine; then Springfield, the wide-meadowed, well-feeding, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... turned the brow of the Big Hill, he saw at its eastern foot the village church, a plain brick building with a decaying spire. Its side was perforated by four tall arched windows. Each was a memorial window of stained glass, which gave the building a black look from the outside. As Peter walked down the hill toward the church he heard the and somewhat ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... one's eyes from that place to the vista of the city's splendid reaches, with spire and spar shining in the clear atmosphere and the marvel of the Jersey shore, pearl- misted or brilliant with detail. From this height the sweep of a snow-storm was defined and majestic. Even a slight summer shower, with swords of lurid yellow sunlight piercing its edges ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... And when a circle 'bout the wrist Is made by beadle exorcist, The body feels the spur and switch, As if 'twere ridden post by witch At twenty miles an hour pace, 1160 And yet ne'er stirs out of the place. On top of this there is a spire, On which Sir Knight first bids the Squire The fiddle and its spoils, the case, In manner of a trophee place. 1165 That done, they ope the trap-door gate, And let CROWDERO down thereat; CROWDERO making doleful face, Like hermit poor in pensive place. To ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... Michael's tall spire has just struck two, as, in the arena of the prison, Nicholas is seen, halted in front of his little band, calmly awaiting the advance of his adversaries, who, fearing to open the great gates, have scaled ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... may have been that he was far away from Mangadone in this child-world which is so hard to find again, as he slept, and the outside world grew from grey to green, and from green to misty gold. The sunlight flamed on the spire of the Pagoda, it danced up the brown river and threw long shadows before its coming, those translucent shadows that no artist has ever yet been able to paint. It turned the mohur trees blood-red, and the grass to shining emerald green, and Mangadone looked as though it had ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... he saw the spire of a small white church, and as he walked briskly toward it, Herman's description of ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... depths of the descent, which was not so precipitous there as under the castle, the high houses and green braes were reflected in the quiet waters of the North Loch. From thence the fields and scattered farmhouses, the Calton Hill in unadorned greenness, a church spire and a cluster of village roofs here and there, led the eye to the shining of the Scottish Sea, the great water with its islands, the coast of Fife with its dotted line of little fishing towns, the two green Lomonds standing softly distinct against the misty line of more distant hills. It was ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... nowhere else that I could ever see. And these Davosers took to them naturally when the time for Comus came. It was between four and five in the morning, and nearly all the houses in the place were dark. The tall church-tower and spire loomed up above us in grey twilight. The tireless wind still swept thin snow from fell and forest. But the frenzied bells had sunk into their twelvemonth's slumber, which shall be broken only by decorous tollings at less festive times. I wondered whether they were tingling still with the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... rich, level pastures of the 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 Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... Minster, I know not how to distinguish it, except by its great size and the height of its spire, from those other ancient churches in different parts of the kingdom, which used to be called monuments of Gothic architecture; but it is now agreed, that this stile is Saracen rather than Gothic; and, I suppose, it was first imported into England ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... dark shaft of the tower whence the bell had rung its warning, at the dusky mass of the Capitol, at the spire of St. Paul's, and then down at a flickering figure passing rapidly on the other side of the street. Robert's eyes were keen, and a soldier's life had accustomed him to their use in the darkness. He caught only a glimpse of it, but was sure ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... visited the Aindaw-Yah Pagoda, the oldest in Mandalay. This is entirely gilt, from base to spire, and presents an imposing appearance. It is surrounded by a large square or platform on which are placed various other shrines containing small images ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... Crawling out of their green shirts... Tubercular towns Coughing a little in the dawn... And the church... There is always a church With its natty spire And the vestibule— That's where they whisper: Tzz-tzz... tzz-tzz... tzz-tzz... How many codes for a wireless whisper— And corn flatter than it should be And those chits of leaves Gadding with every wind? Small towns From ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... 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 ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... 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 ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... their view, And in a moment to Olympus flew. Now shed Aurora round her saffron ray, Sprang through the gates of light, and gave the day: Charged with the mournful load, to Ilion go The sage and king, majestically slow. Cassandra first beholds, from Ilion's spire, The sad procession of her hoary sire; Then, as the pensive pomp advanced more near, (Her breathless brother stretched upon the bier,) A shower of tears o'erflows her beauteous eyes, Alarming thus ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... Meantime, by truant love of rambling led, I turn my back on thy detested walls, Proud City, and thy sons I leave behind, A selfish, sordid, money-getting kind, Who shut their ears when holy Freedom calls. I pass not thee so lightly, humble spire, That mindest me of many a pleasure gone, Of merriest days, of love and Islington, Kindling anew the flames of past desire; And I shall muse on thee, slow journeying on, To the green ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... straggling little settlement which they saw, with one long, broken street running through the center. There was a church spire, to be sure, and a square little wooden building in which some business men had started a bank for the sake of the coming settlers now beginning to pass through for the country along the Peace River. There were one or two ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... river where Diane had planned to camp a week, two men appeared upon the wide, white-pillared Sherrill porch, smoking and idly admiring the bluish hills and the rolling meadowlands below bright with morning sunlight. To the east lay the silver glimmer of a tree-fringed lake; beyond, a church spire among the trees and a winding country road traveled by the solitary van of ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... up the bayou for miles; Felice, who was ever ready for a tramp along the rose-hedged lanes to the swamp lakes when the water-lilies were in bloom; to the sugar-house in grinding-time, down the levee road to St. Joseph's, the little brown ivy-grown church, whose solitary spire arose slim and straight above ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... 24). The balustrade which crowns a colonnade is a repetition, in some sort, of the colonnade itself. The modillions of a Corinthian cornice are but elaborated and embellished dentils. Each pinnacle of a Gothic cathedral is a little tower with its spire. As Ruskin has pointed out, the great vault of the cathedral nave, together with the pointed roof above it, is repeated in the entrance arch with its gable, and the same two elements appear in every statue-enshrining niche of the doorway. In classic architecture, as has been shown, ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... Nimegnen, Cleves, Duysberg, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Bonne, Coblentz, Nassau, Hocheim, Frankfort, and made an excursion to Hanau, then to Mayence, and another excursion to Rudesheim, and Johansberg; then by Oppenheim, Worms, and Manheim, making an excursion to Heidelberg, then by Spire, Carlsruhe, Rastadt, and Kelh, to Sfrasburg, where I arrived April the 16th, and proceeded again on the 18th, by Phalsbourg, Fenestrange, Dieuze, Moyenvie, Nancy, Toul, Ligny, Barleduc, St. Diziers, Vitry, Chalons sur Marne, Epernay, Chateau Thierri, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... And if 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 really have ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... them, in a cup-like depression, lay a nearly circular lake of the purest and stillest water, in whose mirror-like surface were reflected the rocky sides, verdant with beautiful growth, the towering trees and spire-like needles which ran up for hundreds of feet, here and there crumbled into every imaginable form, but clothed by nature with wondrous growth wherever plant could find room to root in the ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... of my youth, Seat of Friendship and Truth, Where Love chac'd each fast-fleeting year, Loth to leave thee I mourn'd, For a last look I turn'd, But thy spire was scarce seen ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... in use before and at the conquest; from the circumstance of its being built with the materials of the neighbouring Roman work, it will perhaps be no anachronism to assign to it a date prior to that period. The tower is also Saxon; and the spire having been damaged by the wind is ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... 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
... delicate shape of strength native to such a foot, and each toe left its print distinct and even in the dust. With his eye for queer details, he remembered that print and associated with it the yellow-rutted road, the rusty alders in the meadow beyond, and the pale spire of the church ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and turning into Grace Street strolled leisurely in the direction of the Capitol Square. The night was sharp with frost and a rising wind drove the shadows on the pavement against darkened house-fronts, while behind a far-off church spire, a wizened moon shivered through a thin cloud. On the silence came the sound of fire bells ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... world. Day and night, week in week out, the human writing-machines, and those other machines which are almost human (and better than human in some points) hurry through their allotted tasks, and ignore the saintly shadow cast upon them by the spire of St. Dunstan. This is indeed the centre of the world: the hub from whence spring the spokes of the vast wheel of life. For to this point all things over the world converge by a vast web of wire, railroad, coach road, ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... of the states within the Confederacy changed by the conclusion of the Buergerrecht; but that of the entire nation toward foreign countries was just as much altered. Early in the beginning of February, 1528, a letter of the Emperor, written from Spire, reached Luzern, with complaints about this alliance; very similar ones were received from the authorities of the Austrian Government at Ensisheim and Inspruck, and still a fourth one from the captains of the Swabian League. "Constance," such was their general drift, "is ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... 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 through a small gate on the top of the bank, you at once ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... could not but think what a contrast it offered to our great St. Paul's, so 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, would the fairy-like ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... has closed this book) he conjures up the idea he attaches to the name of its heroine, let him see before her, as she glides through the humble room— as she listens to the voice of him she loves—as she sits musing by the window, with the church spire just visible—as day by day the soul brightens and expands within her—still let the reader see within the same walls, greyhaired, blind, dull to all feeling, frozen to all life, that stony image of Time and Death! Perhaps then he may understand ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... approached, indifferent to the tragedies it concealed, as it was indifferent to the ardent life that ebbed and flowed across its many bridges. On its breast, the small, dark craft of the city nestled lazily; to right and left along its banks, the sun struck glints of gold and bronze from spire and monument; while, close against its sides, on the very parapet of its quays, there was in progress that quaint book traffic that strikes so intimate a note in the ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... our favourite elms That screen the herdsman's solitary hut; While far beyond and overthwart the stream That, as with molten glass, inlays the vale, The sloping land recedes into the clouds; Displaying on its varied side the grace Of hedgerow beauties numberless, square tower, Tall spire, from which the sound of cheerful bells Just undulates upon the listening ear; Groves, heaths, and smoking villages remote. Scenes must be beautiful which daily viewed Please daily, and whose novelty survives Long knowledge ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... go down among them?—among those sweet living things, whose new courage, sprung from the earth with the deep color of heaven upon it, is starting up in strength of goodly spire; and whose purity, washed from the dust, is opening, bud by bud, into the flower of promise;—and still they turn to you and for you, "The Larkspur listens—I hear, I hear! And ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... front of us. Anyway, such was its appearance at a first glance, for white tents stretched far away east and west, and appeared to swamp into insignificance the unpretentious houses, and even a fairly imposing church-spire which lay in the background. I had never seen anything like this vast army depot, and examined everything with the greatest attention and interest. Huge mountains of forage covered by tarpaulin sheets were the first things ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... by name, of Middleburg, had in his shop a curious toy, rigged up, it is said, by an apprentice, and made out of a couple of spectacle lenses, whereby, if one looked through it, the weather-cock of a neighbouring church spire was seen nearer and ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... thick coating of powder. Over the wide door two little oblong windows, holding four damaged panes, blinked rakishly from a mat of ivy, which spread from the rotting eaves to the shingled roof, where the slim wooden spire bent under the weight of creeper and innumerable nesting sparrows in spring. After pointing heavenward for half a century, the steeple appeared to have swerved suddenly from its purpose, and to invite now the attention of the wayfarer to the bar beneath. This cheerful room ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... warm glow at the heart, the realisation was brought to him. This was home, and over yonder, under the shadow of the heaven-pointing spire, a slip of a girl ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... heavens above it bowed; The sun was radiant, large, and glowing; And, see, a minister's structure proud Stood in the rich light, golden showing. The clouds around it, sunny-clear, Seemed bearing it aloft like pinions; Its spire-point seemed to disappear, Slow vanishing ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... gloves and tools, and went away, tugging her basket of weeds. Elliott, left behind, surveyed the borders critically. To cut without letting it appear that she had cut was evidently what Aunt Jessica wanted. She reached in and snipped off a spire of larkspur from the very back of the border, then stood back to see what had happened. No, if one hadn't known the stalk had been there, one wouldn't now know it was gone. The thing could be done, then. Cautiously she selected a head of white phlox. ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... left. Once more the car began to move, sinking in a long still curve towards the face of the mountain; and as it checked, and began to sway again on its huge wings, he turned to the door, seeing as he did so, through the cloudy windows in the glow of light, a spire of rock not thirty feet below rising from the mist, and one smooth shoulder of snow ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... the girl's heart a little glint of youthful joy, which was unusual. She had met Mr. Von Rosen and had forgotten herself, that is at first, and he had looked kindly at her. There was no foolish hope in little Annie Eustace's heart; there would be no spire of aspiration added to her dreams because of the meeting, but she tasted the sweet of approbation, and it was a tonic which she sorely needed, and which inspired her to self-assertion in a childishly naughty and mischievous ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the soldier's bayonet, by the gleaming ploughshare in the furrow as by the black Columbiad couchant on the rampart, by the schoolhouse in the valley as by the grim battery on the bay, by the church spire rising from the grove, by the humble cottage in the glen, by the Bible on the stand at eve, by the prayer from the peaceful hearth, by the bell that calls to worship through the hallowed air; by the merchant at his desk, and by the farmer in the harvest field, by the judge upon the bench, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... been long celebrated for its beauty and cleanliness, for its striking approach from the south, its magnificent Grand Stand, and celebrated Race Course, its public buildings, its venerable Gothic Church, and stately tower; and latterly, by the erection of a beautiful Gothic Church, with an elegant spire, giving an additional feature to the town ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... ordered the mareschal de Noailles to assemble sixty thousand men upon the Maine; while Coigny was sent into Alsace with a numerous army to defend that province, and oppose prince Charles should he attempt to pass the Rhine. The mareschal de Noailles, having secured the towns of Spire, Worms, and Oppenheim, passed the Rhine in the beginning of June, and posted himself on the east side of that river, above Franckfort. The earl of Stair advanced towards him, and encamped at Killen-bach, between the river ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... 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 apply that admirable machine to worthy purposes. While English ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... robin mounted to a spruce-spire and acted as Job's comforter to all the birds of the garden by singing—ah, so plaintively and sweetly!—of the dismal days of frost and snow, he "preened"—i.e. went over and combed every feather, and tested and retested, cleaned and recleaned, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... St. Charles, brightening the dull, gray stone of walls and cathedrals and convents, turning every window on the west to fire and transforming a multitude of towers and turrets and minarets to glittering gold. Small wonder, indeed, that all our rough tripmen stopped paddling and with eyes on the spire of Notre Dame des Victoires muttered prayers for a prosperous voyage. For some reason or other, I found my own hat off. So was Mr. Jack MacKenzie's, so was Eric Hamilton's. Then the voyageurs fell ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut |
