"Solstice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... glimmering light To guide the wanderer's steps aright, Yet not enough from far to show His figure to the watchful foe. With cautious step and ear awake, He climbs the crag and threads the brake; And not the summer solstice there Tempered the midnight mountain air, But every breeze that swept the wold Benumbed his drenched limbs with cold. In dread, in danger, and alone, Famished and chilled, through ways unknown, Tangled and steep, he journeyed on; ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... Cultes") has drawn out in detail the various sun-myths, and has pointed to their common features. Briefly stated, these points are as follows: the hero is born about Dec. 25th, without sexual intercourse, for the sun, entering the winter solstice, emerges in the sign of Virgo, the heavenly virgin. His mother remains ever-virgin, since the rays of the sun, passing through the zodiacal sign, leave it intact. His infancy is begirt with dangers, because the new-born sun is feeble in the midst of the winter's ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... without those limits, but more feebly, in proportion as the surface of the globe is there more obliquely presented to its rays. This effect, though not great, is not to be neglected when the sun is in or near our summer solstice, which is the season of these easterly breezes. The northern air, too, flowing towards the equatorial parts, to supply the vacuum made there by the ascent of their heated air, has only the small rotary motion of the polar latitudes from ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Cigales appear about the summer solstice. Along the beaten paths, calcined by the sun, hardened by the passage of frequent feet, we see little circular orifices almost large enough to admit the thumb. These are the holes by which the larvae of the Cigale have come up from the depths ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... bagnios as completely furnishing a happy life: nor, if the violent south wind has tossed you in the deep, will you therefore sell your ship on the other side of the Aegean Sea. On a man sound in mind Rhodes and beautiful Mitylene have such an effect, as a thick cloak at the summer solstice, thin drawers in snowy weather, [bathing in] the Tiber in winter, a fire in the month of August. While it is permitted, and fortune preserves a benign aspect, let absent Samos, and Chios, and Rhodes, be ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... Solstitial and Equinoctial Points in the fifteenth degrees or middles of the Constellations of Cancer, Chelae, Capricorn, and Aries. Meton in the year of Nabonassar 316, observed the Summer Solstice in the eighth degree of Cancer, and therefore the Solstice had then gone back seven degrees. It goes back one degree in about seventytwo years, and seven degrees in about 504 years. Count these years back from the year of Nabonassar 316, and they will place the Argonautic expedition ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton
... friendly terms with it. The forest will give him more, too. Out of its mysterious darkness will slip easily into his mind the old-time loved and half-forgotten legends that grew out of the winter night in the twilight of the early days of the Aryan race. At the time of the winter solstice it was the custom of the gods to leave their dwellings in heaven and come down to earth. In the shout of the wind in the pines he may well hear Wotan riding overhead in his gray cloak and broad-brimmed hat ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... the worship of the Prey Beings takes place either a little before or after the winter solstice or national New Year. ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... appears towards the summer solstice, almost simultaneously with the first Cigales. The punctuality of its appearance gives it a place in the entomological calendar, which is no less punctual than that of the seasons. When the longest days ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... married Mirza Mehemmed Juki[12]. On the twenty-eighth of the before named month, they entered the country of Ilduz[13], which was occupied by the tribe of Jel, and under the dominion of Shir Behram, or Scheir Begrahim; and though the sun was then in the summer solstice, they were often astonished to find ice two inches thick in this vast desert. On the eighth of Jomada-al-akher, they were alarmed, by receiving, news that the son of Ahmed Beg had plundered the Daji, who was ambassador from Awis, or Oweys Khan; and they made every possible ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva[261] watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac[262] he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice[263] he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His notebooks impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance office increases the number of accidents; and it ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... birds of several species sing last year after Midsummer; enough to prove that the summer solstice is not the period that puts a stop to the music of the woods. The yellowhammer no doubt persists with more steadiness than any other; but the woodlark, the wren, the red-breast, the swallow, the white-throat, the goldfinch, the common linnet, are ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... angels bring her the symbol of God's pain. The cool breezes of the morning lift the gilt threads from her brow. On that little hill by the city of Florence, where the lovers of Giorgione are lying, it is always the solstice of noon, of noon made so languorous by summer suns that hardly can the slim naked girl dip into the marble tank the round bubble of clear glass, and the long fingers of the lute-player rest idly upon the chords. It is twilight always for the dancing nymphs whom Corot set free among the silver ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... represented these spirits. According to the original custom a new May tree was cut down in the forest every year, but later a permanent May pole was set up on the village common. On Midsummer Eve (June 23), which marked the summer solstice, came the fire festival, when people built bonfires and leaped over them, walked in procession with torches round the fields, and rolled burning wheels down the hillsides. These curious rites may have been once connected with sun worship. Hallow Eve, so called from being the eve of ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... each year, here at Thebes, a light as of a conflagration used to penetrate from one end to the other of the sanctuaries of Amen; for the middle artery is open towards the north-west, and is aligned in such a fashion that, once a year, one solitary time, on the evening of the summer solstice, the sun as it sets is able to plunge its reddened rays straight into the sanctuaries. At the moment when it enlarges its blood-coloured disc before descending behind the desolation of the Libyan mountains, it arrives in the very axis of this avenue, ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... raise the spirits. It was an inauspicious beginning of active service, and typical of the many long and weary weeks of wet discomfort that the Sixth of Michigan was destined to experience before the summer solstice had fairly passed. The points of interest,—the public buildings, the white house, the massive Greek architecture of the Treasury building, the monument, all these as they glided like phantoms, through the mist, attracted scarcely a casual glance. ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... shines on the Pole for six months, the uplands of the continent are warmed and the northern zone of low pressure pushes southward. So, in Adelie Land, short spells of calm weather may be expected over a period of barely three months around the summer solstice. This explanation is intentionally popular. The meteorological problem is one which can only be fully discussed when all the manifold observations have been gathered together, from other contemporary Antarctic expeditions, from our two stations on the Antarctic continent, and ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... deem strange and outlandish their Sabbaths and New Moons and other Holy Days erst loved of the Almighty, we deal familiarly with the Saturnalia and the Calends of January, with the Matronalia and the Feast of the Winter Solstice; New Year's gifts and foolish presents fill all our thoughts; merrymakings and junketings are in every house. The Heathens guard their religion better; they are heedful to observe none of our Feasts, for fear of being taken for Christians, while we never hesitate to make ourselves look ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... what might be done by more drastic enforcement of the conscription laws, he concluded: "Let us then unite our hands and our hearts, lock our shields together, and we may well believe that before another summer solstice falls upon us, it will be the enemy that will be asking us for conferences and occasions in which ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... early in use in the East, but it was found also among the Mexicans; the sole astronomical observations of the Peruvians were made by it; and we read that 1100 B.C., the Chinese found that, at a certain place, the length of the sun's shadow, at the summer solstice, was to the height of the gnomon as one and a half to eight. Here again it is observable, not only that the instrument is found ready made, but that Nature is perpetually performing the process of measurement. Any fixed, erect object—a column, a dead palm, a pole, ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... the higher will grow the rice. For the ceremony is described as a harvest festival, and swinging is practised by the Letts of Russia with the avowed intention of influencing the growth of the crops. In the spring and early summer, between Easter and St. John's Day (the summer solstice), every Lettish peasant is said to devote his leisure hours to swinging diligently; for the higher he rises in the air the higher will ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... pedantic to you." said Ebba, "I would tell you what Eric has told me about our Christmas festival. It appears to date back to a remote day before the Christian era. At this season our pagan ancestors celebrated the winter solstice, just as on the 25th of June they did that of summer. The early name of this festival, which we yet preserve, indicates an astronomical idea. It was called Julfest. (the feast of the wheel,) certainly because the sun, the evolutions of which are on the 25th December marked by the shortest ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various |
