"Spire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were very comfortably provided for in other covered boats. The king and queen had already arrived, and were in a large barge at the east bank of the river. This vessel, the form of which represented two huge fishes, was extremely splendid; every part of it was richly gilt; and a spire of at least thirty feet high, resembling in miniature that of the palace, rose in the middle. The king and queen sat under a green canopy at the bow of the vessel, which, according to Burman notions, is the place of honour; indeed, the only part ever occupied ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... was building my new church, and talking about the tower and spire we were going to erect, an elderly Christian lady who was sitting in her wheel-chair, calmly listening to our conversation, said, "Will you begin to build your spire from the top?"* It was a strange question, but she evidently meant something, and looked for an answer. ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... of the surrounding country and a better hearing of the guns if possible. After a few words exchanged with the sexton—a staunch Italian, as he told us he was—we went up the ladder of the church spire. Once on the wooden platform, we could hear more distinctly the boom of the guns, which sounded like the broadsides of a big vessel. Were they the guns of Persano's long inactive fleet attacking some of Brondolo's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... they flew over the trees, and over the houses, over the windings of the Nidda. Walter could hear the tinkle tinkle of sheep bells below, or was it possible that he could already hear the bells of fairyland ringing? Over the church spire of a little village they soared, and all the children shouted: "Zeppelin! Zeppelin!" because you see all this happened in modern times, when even the children no ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... vista of trees and houses from the slope of our garden, W. V. saw the roof and spire of the church of the Oak-men showing well above the green huddle ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... grateful to the smell; while the eyesight was soothed by reposing on the smooth sward of a bowling-green spread out immediately before it, or in dwelling upon gently undulating meads, terminating, at about a mile's distance, in the woody, spire-crowned ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... stuff? She might have kissed him to stop the flow of it, but kissings were rare between them; so rare, that when they had put mouth to mouth, a little quivering spire of flame, dim at the base, stood to mark the spot in their memories. She moved her hand, as to throw aside such talk. Unfretful in blood, chaste and keen, she at least knew the foolishness of the common ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... almost be a better term," Paul answered. "The only church spire that existed for half a century, in that town, was surmounted by a mitre, while the cross was ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... whole world. Before long he embarked in the same little cockleshell of a boat he had had in Egypt, sailed round the beard of the English, set foot in France, and France acclaimed him. The sacred cuckoo flew from spire to spire; all France cried out with one voice, 'LONG LIVE THE EMPEROR!' In this region, here, the enthusiasm for that wonder of the ages was, I may say, solid. Dauphine behaved well; and I am particularly pleased ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... end of the song he spun the penny so high that it fell into the Well-House; and endeavoring to catch it he flung the spire of wild-flower after it, and so lost both. And nobody took the least notice of ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... her maid, in trim cap and apron, waiting to welcome her. Not a petal had fallen from the bed of crimson dahlias beside the steps; not a leaf had changed on the young maple tree, which rose in a spire of flame toward the stars. Inside, she knew, there would be the bright fire, the cheerful supper table, the soft bed turned ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... plain, dotted with little patches of green shrubbery and forest. On the west the city commanded a wide view over an enchanting lake studded with darkly wooded isles, above whose trees peeped here and there some grim turret or lofty spire. Finally, in the east, the burgher standing on the city's walls could trace for several miles the current of a silver stream, glittering in the sunlight, and twisting in and out among the islands along the coast until ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... 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 ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... Fatigue parties dug trenches in the snow, without the walls, by way of exercise or bravado. Sentinels at the Block House and other exposed points were frequently frostbitten. A kind of sentry-box was fixed on a pole thirty feet high, at Cape Diamond. Thence could be seen the tin spire of St. Foye Church, but not the Plains of Abraham, beyond Gallow's Hill, where the besiegers lay in force. Over the American camp the red-flag waved. Some thought it was the bloody flag, by way of threat. But it was no more than a signal to the prisoners within the town. About one ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... can by Rowley's pen be scann'd. Thou see'st the saints and kings in stony state, As if with breath and human soul expand. Well may'st thou be astounded—view it well; Go not from hence before thou see thy fill, And learn the builder's virtues and his name. Of this tall spire in every country tell, And with thy tale the lazy rich men shame; Show how the glorious Canning did excel; How he, good man, a friend for kings became, And glorious paved at once the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... tower, the highest tower in the city, with a gallery similar to the last storey of the palace, and above a loggia borne by four pillars, from which spring the great arches of the canopy that supports the spire; and whereas the battlements of the palazzo are square and Guelph, those of the tower are Ghibelline in the shape of the tail of the swallow. Set, not in the centre of the square, nor made to close it, but on one side, it was thus placed, ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... the present going to pieces. I have always felt this instinctively. It came to me clearly only a few years ago. It is a bad thing to become wholly loosened from the soil, to forget the village church spire. Curiously enough poetry attaches only to objects that have come down to us, that have had long use. What is called progress, a vague and very doubtful term, rouses the lower parts of our intelligence. ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... her determination she avoided the town main street, and struck off by the narrow turning which led through the old churchyard, with its grand lime-tree avenue and venerable church, whose crocketed spire was a landmark for all the southern part ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... in my 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. Peter ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... dwelling in heaven. In arms I avenged Larsa (held by the Elamite, Rim-Sin), and restored E-BAB-BAR (temple of Shamash at Larsa) for Shamash my helper. As overlord I gave fresh life to Erech, furnishing abundance of water to its people, and completed the spire of E-AN-NA (temple of Nana at Erech). I completed the glory of Anu and Ninni. As a protector of my land, I reassembled the scattered people of Nisin (recently reconquered from the Elamites) and replenished the treasury of E-GAL-MAH (temple of Nisin). As the royal potentate of ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... they were from the northern part of the forest or from beyond the Wye; neither Father Jerome nor his other lieutenant, John, was present. Windybank stretched himself on the grass just above the water, being determined to say nothing to any man. He fell to contemplating the tall spire of Westbury Church, which stood out like a blurred finger in the darkness. ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... them!" she cried. "Let them build tower on tower, spire on spire, crypts, picture galleries, altars, confessionals, if they like. Tell me about ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... Norwegian brigantines, weird as The Flying Dutchman in their black and white paint, carrying ice or lumber to Rouen; fishing-boats with red or umber sails. He was blind to the villages, clambering over cliffs to a casino, a plage, and a Hotel des Bains, or nestling on the uplands round a spire. He was blind to the picturesque wooded gorges, through which little tributaries of the great river had once run violently down from the table-land of the Pays de Caux. He was blind to the charms of Harfleur, famous and somnolent, on the banks of a still more somnolent ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... at the bottom, with many willows, and pools fringed with withered sedges. The fields were mostly pastures, with here and there a fallow. There were a good many bits of woodland all about, and a tall spire of pale stone, far to the south, overtopped the roofs of a little town. I was met by an old groom or coachman, with a little ancient open cart, and we drove sedately along pleasant lanes, among woods, till we entered a tiny village, which he told me was Aveley, consisting ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... changed. 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 of play-goers, still happily lives to charm men and women of to-day. Webster, Choate, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... he spoke, the form of Satan loomed In sight, all crimson with reflections's fire, Like some tall tower or cathedral spire Touched by the dawn while all the earth is gloomed In mists and shadows of the night time. "Sire," Said Waterman, his agitable wick Still sputtering, "what calls you back so quick? It scarcely was a century ago You left us." "I have come to bring," said Nick, "St. Peter's answer ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... yet with an almost playful freedom." His engravings of Old St. Paul's, though not entirely accurate, undoubtedly give a true general view of the Cathedral as it was in its last years, after the alterations and additions by Inigo Jones, and nearly a century after the fall of the spire. ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... digging of potatoes,—how I longed to turn up the historic soil, into which had passed the sweat and virtue of so many generations, with my own spade,—then upon the quaint, old, thatched houses, or the cluster of tiled roofs, then catching at a church spire across a meadow (and it is all meadow), or at the remains of tower or wall overrun ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... blue dancing ocean, over which several white sails were skimming rapidly. Inland there was a beautifully diversified country. There were several rich woods surrounding gentlemen's seats, and here and there a hamlet and a church spire rising up among the trees, and some extensive homesteads, the gems of an English rural landscape; and there were wide pasture lands, and ploughed fields already getting a green tinge from the rising corn, and many orchards blushing with pink ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... them and helped them on board the boat. As the Butterfly made its way out into the channel the little girls looked back at the long water-front, where lay many vessels from far-off ports. In the distance they could see the spire of St. Philip's, one of the historic churches of Charleston, and everywhere ...
— Yankee Girl at Fort Sumter • Alice Turner Curtis
... Hark! how it howls! Methinks Till now I never heard a sound so dreary, Doors creak and windows clap, and night's foul bird, Rocked in the spire, screams loud: the gloomy aisles, Black-plastered and hung 'round with shreds of scutcheons And tattered coats-of-arms, send back the sound, Laden with heavier airs, from the low vaults, The ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... salient 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
... Nor is it without the strange significance which you will find in what at first seems chance, in all noble histories, as soon as you can read them rightly,—that the statue of Athena Polias was of olive-wood, and that the Greek temple and Gothic spire are both merely the permanent representations of useful wooden structures. On these two first arts follow building in stone,—sculpture,—metal work,—and painting; every art being properly called "fine" which demands the exercise of the full faculties of heart and intellect. ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... flaming records of the days when every instant held not an eternity of ennui, but of sensibility. "Red life boils in my veins.... Every woman is to me the gift of a world.... I hear a thousand nightingales.... I could eat all the elephants of Hindostan and pick my teeth with the spire of Strasburg Cathedral.... Life is the greatest of blessings, and death the worst of evils...." But the poet was still reading—she ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... pine, white cypress, cypressus thyoides, the wild pine, with two or three other sorts of pine less common. The two first make up almost two-thirds of the whole; and, at a distance, might be mistaken for the same tree, as they both run up into pointed spire-like tops, but they are easily distinguished on coming nearer from their colour, the cypress being of a much paler green, or shade, than the other. The trees, in general, grow with great vigour, and are all of a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... pyramid, built of great square stones of fluor spar, straight up; and here are the three little pinnacles of mischievous quartz, which have set themselves, at the same time, on the same foundation; only they lean like the tower of Pisa, and come out obliquely at the side: and here is one great spire of quartz which seems as if it had been meant to stand straight up, a little way off; and then had fallen down against the pyramid base, breaking its pinnacle away. In reality, it has crystallized horizontally, and ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... the main street, in the part of the town on the right or north bank, is St. Aspais, an elegant church of the 14th cent. surrounded by crocketed gabled chapels. By the side of the main entrance rises a buttressed square tower, terminating in a high peaked roof prolonged into a short spire. In the interior are some delicately sculptured canopy work and 8 windows with valuable old glass. A few yards off the main street is the Hotel de Ville with a round attached turret in each corner; and in the centre of the court a marble statue to Jacques Amyot, born in 1514, ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... there about the farming country lying before the youth as he looked westward were cottages, or the more important-looking homesteads on the larger farms; and in the distance a white church spire behind the trees marked the tiny settlement ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... 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 ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... he had seen Caernarvon's towers, And well he knew the spire of Sarum; And he had been where Lincoln bell Flings o'er the fen that ponderous knell— A far-renowned ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... of brown sandstone raised in colossal blocks. The spire, floriated richly and graduated with a precise symmetry, rises to an extreme altitude of 220 feet 6 inches. The extreme length is about 170 ft. The massive oaken front doors are carved handsomely, and contain the arms of the Stewart family, the Clinch family (Mrs. Stewart's maiden name), ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... Mary a dear kiss, And let gold Michael, who look'd down, When I was there, on Rouen town, From the spire, bring me that kiss On a ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... our right, near the intersection of Boylston and Tremont Streets, lies the half-forgotten, almost obliterated Central Burying Ground, the final resting-place of Gilbert Stuart, the famous American painter. At the left points the spire of Park Street Church, notable not for its age, for it is only a little over a century old, but for its charming beauty, and by the fact that William Lloyd Garrison delivered his first address here, and here "America" was sung in public for the first time. It ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... hearts of her citizens and strike out the fire there. And here, on the right, stands the long dark mass of Santa Croce, where we buried our famous dead, laying the laurel on their cold brows and fanning them with the breath of praise and of banners. But Santa Croce had no spire then: we Florentines were too full of great building projects to carry them all out in stone and marble; we had our frescoes and our shrines to pay for, not to speak of rapacious condottieri, bribed royalty, and purchased territories, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... grave beneath a spire I lie and watch the pointed climbing fire, I lie and watch the smoky weather-cock That climbs too high, and bends to the breeze's shock, And breaks, and dances off across the skies Gay as a flurry of ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... mind they, like the pagans of ancient Rome, charge them with horrible crimes, and seize the slightest occasion for murderous attack. A church [Page 262] spire is said to disturb the good luck of a neighbourhood—the people burn the building. A rumour is started that babies in a foundling hospital have their eyes taken out to make into photographic medicine—the hospital is demolished and the Sisters ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... amidst artificial reeds and herbage, as from his native jungle; the grisly white bear peered from a mimic iceberg. There, in front, stood the sage elephant, facing a hideous hippopotamus; whilst an anaconda twined its long spire round the stem of some tropical tree in zinc. In glass cases, brought into full light by festooned lamps, were dread specimens of the reptile race,—scorpion and vampire, and cobra capella, with insects of gorgeous hues, not a few of ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Salza's quiet tide the westering sun Gleams mildly; and the lengthening shadows dun, Chequered with ruddy streaks from spire and roof, Begin to weave fair twilight's mystic woof; Till the dim tissue, like a gorgeous veil, Wraps the proud city, in her ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... like the arms of a woman at a wash-tub. The destroyers of the tower of Rheims are quite capable of destroying the Tower of Giotto. But they are equally capable of the greater crime of completing it. And if they put on a spire, what a spire it would be! What an extinguisher for that clear and almost transparent Christian candle! Have you read some of the German explanations of Hamlet? Did I tell you that Leonardo's hair must have been German hair, because so many of his contemporaries said it was ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... her eyes followed the gentle tension, the fervent inclination of its stony slopes which drew together as they rose, like hands joined in prayer, she would absorb herself so utterly in the outpouring of the spire that her gaze seemed to leap upwards with it; her lips at the same time curving in a friendly smile for the worn old stones of which the setting sun now illumined no more than the topmost pinnacles, which, at the point where they entered ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... also object to those wild fanatics who would "elevate the stage," not because it would be Herculean labor, but because the aforesaid fanatics would find larger and more fruitful fields for their efforts in the shadow of their own church spire. Let them leave the women of the footlights alone and turn their attention to the women in the boxes. It would give a bored public relief and be distinctly and beautifully amusing—as an experiment. Waco, Texas, December ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... and out of the Council Chamber, now popularly known as the Sam Adams room, there appears the representative of Sam Adams and of five members of the Boston schools who had signed the Declaration. The officers of the State are there, and over the street shines the spire of the South Church and gleams the Province House Indian. The children are there; aged idlers who loitered about the town pump; the women patriots from Spring Lane. The New England flag, of blue ground with the cross ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... thus far. There were no roses blooming on Archie's cheeks yet; and sometimes, when Lilias watched his pale face, as he sat gazing out into the mist, she was painfully reminded of the time when he used to watch the shadow of the spire coming slowly round to the yew-tree ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... succession of wet weather the produce has remained on the barbacues for several weeks, without the slightest advance in curing; and, unless it be frequently turned while in this wet state, it is sure to germinate; the berries first swell, then a thin white spire issues from the seam, and on opening the berry the young leaves will be actually seen formed inside, so rapid is ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... optician, Hans Lippershey 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 ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... 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
... sun 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 few ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the sound of the well-known rookery gave that sentimental tinge to the varying sensations of my active soul, which only served to heighten the lustre of the luxuriant scenery. But spying, as I advanced, the spire peeping over the withered tops of the aged elms that composed the rookery, my thoughts flew immediately to the church-yard; and tears of affection, such was the effect of my imagination, bedewed my ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... down, to part no more? Far from this pale, discolour'd sea, That sleeps upon the reedy shore: When shall I plough thy azure tide? When on thy hills the flocks admire, Like mountain snows; till down their side I trace the village and the sacred spire, While bowers and copses ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... English 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 ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... stifling smoke, coming up from some newly-lighted fire of green wood, black and choking, and solid in its coils; but as the fire burns up, all the smoke-wreaths will be turned into one flaming spire, full of light and warmth. Do you turn your smoke into fire, your fear into faith. Do not be down-hearted if it takes a while to convert the whole of the lower and baser into the nobler and higher. Faith and fear ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the leafless forest, until it united its waters to those of the Calder, and swept on in swifter and clearer current, to wash the base of Whalley Abbey. But the watcher's survey did not stop here. Noting the sharp spire of Burnley Church, relieved against the rounded masses of timber constituting Townley Park; as well as the entrance of the gloomy mountain gorge, known as the Grange of Cliviger; his far-reaching gaze passed over Todmorden, and settled upon the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... 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 front, and beneath the great window ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... solaced me with scraps of song The desolated ways along: Through sickly fields all shrapnel-sown, And meadows reaped by death alone; By blazing cross and splintered spire, By headless Virgin in the mire; By gardens gashed amid their bloom, By gutted grave, by shattered tomb; Beside the dying and the dead, Where rocket green and rocket red, In trembling pools of poising light, With flowers of flame festoon the night. Ah me! by what ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... the organist was not difficult, when one had come within sight of the lofty spire of the church, for it was under its shadow she lived; but if he had been accustomed to carry messages to her door for years, he could not now have presented himself with fuller confidence as to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... come abreast of the town without challenge, when the sky almost on a sudden grew lighter, and we saw the church spire glimmering and the weather-cock above it, and knew that the moon had risen over the woodland in the shadow of which we crouched. And with that Margery glanced back and ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... buds glistened the sun, When from his couch while his children were sleeping, Rose the bold rebel, and shouldered his gun. Waving her golden veil Over the silent dale, Blithe looked the morning on cottage and spire; Hushed was his parting sigh, While from his noble eye, Flashed the ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... Upon a lofty spire of granite stands a wireless telegraph instrument. Fogs are thick about it, wild surges crash in the unfathomable depths below; the silence is that of chaos, before the first day of creation. Out of the emptiness, a world away, comes a message. At the first syllable, ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... Paul's Churchyard—a bell-house, four square, builded of stone, with four bells; these were called Jesus Bells. The same had a great spire of timber, covered with lead, with the image of St Paul on the top, but was pulled down by Sir Miles Partridge, Kt, in the reign of Henry VIII. The common speech then was that he did set L100 upon a cast at dice against it, and so won the said ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... the wheelbarrow, and gleams along the furrows. Farther away, the withered plants are heaped in rows of little piles. Beyond, the level plain stretches to meet the glowing sky, and, outlined on the horizon, is the spire of the church where the bells ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... so whiten'd was the ground, While Vulcan breathed the fiery blast around. Swift on the sedgy reeds the ruin preys; Along the margin winds the running blaze: The trees in flaming rows to ashes turn, The flowering lotos and the tamarisk burn, Broad elm, and cypress rising in a spire; The watery willows hiss before the fire. Now glow the waves, the fishes pant for breath, The eels lie twisting in the pangs of death: Now flounce aloft, now dive the scaly fry, Or, gasping, turn their bellies to the sky. At length the ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... strange country. Nine in ten of us had never seen a mountain, nor a hill as high as a church spire, until we had crossed the Ohio River. In power upon the emotions nothing, I think, is comparable to a first sight of mountains. To a member of a plains-tribe, born and reared on the flats of Ohio or Indiana, a mountain region ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... like the first hot breath of a hurricane. To and fro swung the tottering old steeple for a moment, and then there was another crash—a loud, grinding, splintering, roaring crash—as the spire reeled heavily down, lengthwise, through the shattered roof of the meeting-house! Except for Mary Ogden's cleverness, the ruins might have fallen upon the crowded Sunday-school. Jack turned and ran for home. He was a good runner, but ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... may deny any attempt at this union. Here the principle only, should be hinted at. In the case of a sunset sky where the clouds float as parallel bars above the horizon and thus show the character of a quiet and windless closing of day, a transitional line such as a tree, mast or spire may be unavailable. Oppositional spots or lines attracting the vision into the land and thus diverting it from the horizontals are the only recourse. In the shore view the sun's rays create a series of lines which admirably unite with the curve of the wagon tracks. ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... of God's own hallow'd day Had painted yonder spire with gold, And calling sinful man to pray, Loud, long, and ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... probably built about the year 1170, the nave and part of chancel being added in 1231, the east end and arch of chancel in 1310, and the tower and spire in 1440. The old building, which contained an interesting collection of monuments in memory of the Holtes, the Ardens, the Erdingtons, and other county families, has been lately enlarged by the extension of the nave and aisles eastward, and widening ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... parsonage of a little church near by and inquired for the minister, but was told by his wife that he had been gone for several weeks to a watering place in the mountains. The old woman ran on further, till she came to a great church whose majestic spire seemed to touch the clouds. A stately rectory was near. Soft music, mingled with merry voices, came out to her through the open doors. Awkwardly and tremblingly she went up the polished marble steps and rang. A servant in livery told her gruffly ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... Germain, "and the farm, and your house too. Look, that little gray speck, not far from the great poplar at Godard, just below the church-spire." ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... we step into the interior of the edifice, who overthrew that colossal figure of Saint Christopher, proverbial among statues by the same right as the great hall of the palace among halls, as the spire of Strasburg among steeples? And those myriad statues which peopled every space between the columns of the choir and the nave, kneeling, standing, on horseback, men, women, children, kings, bishops, men-at-arms—of stone, of marble, of gold, of silver, of copper, nay even of wax—who ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... soaring lyric of the spire, Like the composite voice of all the town, The bells burst swiftly into singing fire That wrapped the building, and which showered down Bright cadences to flash along the ways Loud with the splendid gladness ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... widen suddenly into a gigantic amphitheater. In its very center, rising from a ragged granite pedestal, a pinnacle of rock, crowned by a tiny temple, shot into the air. It was three hundred feet, at least, from the stream bed to the summit of the spire—and what a colossal task it must have been to transport the building materials for the temple up the sheer sides of rock! The valley sinners must gain much merit from the danger and effort involved in ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... to an ordinary vessel dependent on its sails. The shock seemed to have shaken the berg itself, for at that moment a crashing sound was heard overhead. The terror-stricken crew looked up, and for one moment a pinnacle like a church spire was seen to flash through the air right above them. It fell with an indescribable roar close alongside, deluging the decks with water. There was a momentary sigh of relief, which, however, was chased away by a succession of falling ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... be any place and time in the world where and when it seems easy to "go into something" it is in Broadway on a spring morning, when one is walking city-ward, and has before him the long lines of palace-shops with an occasional spire seen through the soft haze that lies over the lower town, and hears the roar and hum of ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... looked at the burning, dry little main street, the white cottages that faced the station from behind their blazing gardens; she looked at the locust trees that almost hid the church spire, at the straggling line of eucalyptus trees that followed the country road to the graveyard a mile away. It was home. It was all she had known of the world—and she was going away into a terrifying new life. Her ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... cones, a trident, a thyrsus tied around with two ribbons with the ends pendant, a thumb and two fingers. The caduceus again the conspicuous part of the sacred Triad Ashur is symbolized by a single stone placed upright,—the stump of a tree, a block, a tower, a spire, minaret, pole, pine, ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... at a church in This attractive little shire, He beheld a smallish urchin Shooting arrows at the spire; In a spirit of derision, "Look alive!" the eagle said; And, with infinite precision, Dropped a feather on ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... all their power." There is the unconscious expression of one of the great minds of the world. Bacon was like one of the architects of the Middle Ages, who drew his plans for a mighty cathedral, perfect in every detail from the deep foundation stone to the cross on the highest spire, and who gave over his plans to the builders, knowing that, in his own lifetime, only one tiny chapel would be completed; but knowing also that the very beauty of his plans would appeal to others, and that succeeding ages would finish the work which ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... from England, where indeed cathedral and other towers are apt to be good, and really make their mark. Robert de Luzarches and his successors aimed rather at the domical outline, with its central point at the centre of the church, in the spire or fleche. The existing spire is a wonderful mass of carpentry [124] of the beginning of the sixteenth century, at which time the lead that carefully wraps every part of it was heavily gilt. The great western towers are lost in the west front, the grandest, perhaps the earliest, example of its ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... smooth downs, the intermediate space being sprinkled over with neat farmhouses and labourers' cottages; and rising above the trees appeared the grey, ivy-covered tower of the parish church, with the taper spire pointing upwards to the clear blue sky—not more clear or bright, though, than his Mary's eyes; so True Blue thought, whether ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... refer those 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
... bank buildings, tall and handsome. Just a little way up the hill, on the further side, is a magnificent white palace-like structure, with a richly ornamented facade and tower. That is the New Town Hall. Higher up is a fine church spire, and beyond it a red brick tower, pricked out with yellow, standing in bold relief against the clear blue sky. You can just see Bourke and Wills' monument there, in the centre of the roadway. And at the very end of the perspective, the handsome grey front ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... white road that passed his farm and wound down into the shady depths. He could see it twisting in and out among the elms, and on through the village where the tall smoke-stack of the saw-mill, the church spire and the chimneys of the houses rose out of the green orchards. It crossed the blue line of the river where the old church stood, and then went winding up the opposite hill ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... 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 curving away ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... or else he takes a frivolous delight in smoking delicately and keeping the white ash whole to the end; the German surrounds himself with a cloud, and, god-like, meditates within it; there is a sacrificial air about the Asiatic's narghileh, as the thin spire rises steadily and spreads above his head; but the Englishman's short briar-root pipe has a powerful individuality of its own. Its simplicity is Gothic, its solidity is of the Stone Age, he smokes it in the face of the ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... with all the cruel, uncompromising clearness of the Californian atmosphere. There was the straight Main Street with its new brick block of "stores," ending abruptly against a tangled bluff; there was the ruthless clearing in the sedate pines where the hideous spire of the new church imitated the soaring of the solemn shafts it had displaced with almost irreligious mockery. Yet this foreground was Cissy's world—her life, her sole girlish experience. She did not, however, bother her pretty head with the view just then, but moved her cheek up and ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... 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 ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... great. Society cannot be lifted from the top. Whoever would raise the level of society must get his lever under its foundation stones. Taking hold of the carved cornice will tear the roof off and lift it away from the building, but raising the lowest stone will also push up the spire's gilded point. He who elevates the peasant will also in time elevate the prince. Jesus did not begin with Caesar, but with shepherds, and then in three hundred years a Christian Caesar sat on ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden
... protected from the sea by sandhills, watered by a winding stream, and bright with fishponds, meadow lands, kalo patches, orange and coffee groves, figs, breadfruit, and palms. There were a number of grass-houses, and a native church with a spire, and another up the valley testified to the energy and aggressiveness of Rome. We saw all this from the moment we reached the pali; and it enlarged, and the detail grew upon us with every yard of the laborious descent of broken ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... throw of the dice, the library had been utterly destroyed, the magnificent plate melted up, and what covetous fanaticism had spared had been further ravaged by a terrible fire. At this time Bishop Bancroft had done his utmost towards reparation, and the old spire had been replaced by a wooden one; but there was much of ruin and decay visible all around, where stood the famous octagon building called Paul's Cross, where outdoor sermons were preached to listeners of all ranks. This was of wood, and was ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on either hand, was bordered by a high rail fence, along which rose, here and there, the bleak spire of a ghostly and perishing Lombardy poplar. This is the tree of all least suited to those wind-beaten regions, but none other will the country people plant. Close up to the road, at one point, curved a massive sweep of red dike, and further to the right stretched the miles on miles ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... completed. More than six hundred years in building. All Europe taxed for its construction. Its chapel of the Magi with precious stones enough to purchase a kingdom. Its chapel of St. Agnes with masterpieces of painting. Its spire springing five hundred and eleven feet into the heavens. Its stained glass the chorus of all rich colors. Statues encircling the pillars and encircling all. Statues above statues, until sculpture can do no more, but faints and falls back against carved stalls and down on pavements ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... mountains inland; and, as they neared Grosse Isle and the quarantine ground, the soft beauties of civilisation were superadded. Many ships of all nations lay at anchor; the shore was dotted with white farmhouses, and neat villages clustered each round the glittering spire of a church. ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... 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 ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... his neck. "I dreamt," she said, "that you and I, Uncle St. Bernard, were walking in a great big city, and there was a church with a golden spire. There were a lot of steps up to it—and Scooter—" a sob rose in her throat and was swiftly suppressed—"was sunning himself on the top. And I tried to run up the steps and catch him, but there were always more ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... 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
... and spotless pond-lily, whose very breath is a blessing to all the region round about.... Among the productions of the river's margin, I must not forget the pickerel-weed, which grows just on the edge of the water, and shoots up a long stalk crowned with a blue spire, from among large green leaves. Both the flower and the leaves look well in a vase with pond-lilies, and relieve the unvaried whiteness of the latter; and, being all alike children of the waters, they are perfectly in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... yet this island of Staten Land far surpasses it in the wildness and horror of its appearance, seeming to be entirely composed of inaccessible rocks, without the smallest apparent admixture of earth or mould, upon or between them. These rocks terminate in a vast number of rugged points, which spire up to a prodigious height, and are all covered with everlasting snow; their pointed summits or pinnacles being every way surrounded by frightful precipices, and often overhanging in a most astonishing manner. The hills which are crowned by the rugged rocks, are generally ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... it is the last time,' said Greif sadly, as his friend finished the knot. Then he went to the window and looked once more at the dim outline of the cathedral spire and listened to the water rushing through its cold bed in the dusk far below. He knew that he should look out but a few times more. He did not know that this time was the last. Rex was looking for his overcoat, and as he moved about ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... snow,-the pitiless snow! Cruel and cold, as the shelterless know; Huddled in nooks on the mud or the flags, Wrapp'd in a few scanty, fluttering rags. Gently it rests on the roof and the spire, And filling the streets with its slush and the mire, Freezing the life out of poor, starving souls, Wild whirling and drifting as Boreas howls. Hard is their lot who have no where to go, To shelter from storm and ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... interesting pages, and the first campaigns of the New Brigade, with the death of Sarsfield and Mountcashel, are carefully narrated. The largest part of the work is occupied with the wars of the Spanish succession, and contains minute narratives of the battles and sieges of Cremona, Spire, Luzzaca, Blenheim, Cassano, Ramilies, Almanza, Alcira, Malplaquet, and Denain, with the actions ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... 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 ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... but there is no other meat. Well may 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
... procession from the Tower to Westminster through the streets was safely accomplished. The retinues of the lords protected the queen from insult, and London put on its usual outward signs of rejoicing; St. Paul's spire was rigged with yards like a ship's mast, an adventurous sailor sitting astride on the weathercock five hundred feet in the air:[140] there was no interruption; and the next day (October 1), Arras ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... by buttresses and flying buttresses and all the rest of it so as to keep them from falling. Look at those," he added, pointing at the skyscrapers before him, "they're not afraid to stand by themselves; they mean something, they have a use, while a spire just sticks straight up, pointing at nothing and being of no service unless it is to hang bells in a belfry. I don't care what people say about those crazy old tumble-down buildings of the Middle Ages, they may be beautiful and all ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Tower of the Metropolitan Building. Whatever artists may think of it the tower is, structurally, one of the wonders of the world. Exactly halfway between sidewalk and point of spire is the great clock with the ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... find some gap in the hedge, when I discovered one of the inhabitants in the next field, advancing towards the stile, of the same size with him whom I saw in the sea pursuing our boat. He appeared as tall as an ordinary spire steeple, and took about ten yards at every stride, as near as I could guess. I was struck with the utmost fear and astonishment, and ran to hide myself in the corn, whence I saw him at the top of the stile looking back into the next field on the right hand, and ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... walk on down to Wall Street, Uncle," he continued, "and go into Trinity Church. There's a magnificent view from the spire." ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... presence of this significant landmark is almost invariable. There is ever the lone and lorn tower, belfry, or spire painted in dark sad colours, seen from afar off, rising from the decayed little town below; often of some antique, original shape that pleases, and yet with a gloomy misanthropical air, as of total abandonment. They are rusted and abrased. ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... through which spots of timid sunshine steal down among legions of lank, mossy trunks, toadstools and rank ferns, protruding roots, matted bushes, and rotting carcasses of fallen trees. A generation ago one might find here and there the rugged trunk of some great pine lifting its verdant spire above the undistinguished myriads of the forest. The woods of Maine had their aristocracy; but the axe of the woodman has laid them low, and these lords of the wilderness are ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... we're coming to that. There's some bad animal that 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
... amazed; for here the flutings ran up five hundred feet inside the stupendous central spire, among a marvelous filigree of windows which diminished toward the top—a lacework as of frost-patterns etched into the solid ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... apprehensions and ennui. It was in this mood that Eglantine found me ruminating on the noble works before me, while resting against a part of the pile of Radcliffe library, contemplating 249the elegant crocketed pinnacles of All Souls, the delicately taper spire of St. Mary's, and the clustered enrichments and imperial canopies of masonry, and splendid traceries which every where strike the eye: all of which objects were rendered trebly impressive from the stillness of the night, and the ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Brandon of th'age of —- yeares, was last incumbent there, but not resident, since anno reg. xxvij who sold his interest to Mr Copley for viijli xi s. ij d. {26} At the west end of the building is a large massy tower, lately put into thorough repair, this is surmounted by an octagonal spire, 230 feet in height, and formed of wooden shingles carefully fitted together. The great bell of this church is the largest in the county, and weighs nearly a ton and a half: the whole peal, consisting of ...
— The History and Antiquities of Horsham • Howard Dudley
... dull, passive demeanour. And they were blessed tears of relief that she shed when Miss Monro, herself weeping bitterly, told her to put her head out of the post-chaise window, for at the next turning of the road they would catch the last glimpse of Hamley church spire. ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... building so clearly expresses its purpose that a definition of style promptly suggests the title of Horticultural Architecture. Its decorative spire-like finials resemble the cypress and poplar. The clusters of floral ornaments and festoons reflect one of the fundamental purposes of decorative glory to which all plant life has been decreed. The bulblike glass dome is like an enormous dewdrop ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... clambered. And as it came in view he would always say, in a sort of recitative, perhaps reminiscent of Scott's narrative poems, which he was at that time reading aloud to us, "There is of Bebbington the holy peak!" To which I would as constantly rejoin, "'Of Bebbington the holy spire,' father!"—being offended by his use of a word so unmusical as peak. He would only smile and trudge onward. He was somewhat solicitous, I suspect, to check in his son any tendency towards mere ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... before), namely, a flower bilaterally different: one other, I observe, has half its calyx purple. Is this not very curious, and opposed to the morphological idea that a flower is a condensed continuous spire of leaves? Does it not look as if flowers were normally bilateral; just in the same way as we now know that the radiating star-fish, etc., are bilateral? The case reminds me of those insects with exactly half having secondary male characters and ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... short stretches of open country that lie between town and town. Belgian towns, remember, lie mostly thick on the ground—you are hardly out of Brussels before you come to Malines, and hardly out of Malines ere you sight the spire of Antwerp. In no part of Europe, perhaps, save in parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire, do you find so many big towns in so limited a space; yet the strips of country that lie between, though often intolerably dull, are (unlike the strips in Yorkshire) intensely rural in character. ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... the room, and brought a sort of spray 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 ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... lean over the railing of the car. Nevertheless I perceived a little black spot. This was Spire. The broad Rhine looked like a riband, the great roads like threads. Above our heads the sky was of a deep azure; I was benumbed with the cold. The birds had long since forsaken us; in this rarefied sir their flight would have been impossible. We were alone ...
— A Voyage in a Balloon (1852) • Jules Verne
... forgot again. By the way, when you see Lois—Miss Caruthers—tell her for me, the cathedral still lacks the chief spire, but otherwise is getting ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... hurry. It was silly, I dare say, but it changed his mind, for I got rather excited, and told the story in my topsy-turvy way, and his wife heard, and said so kindly, 'Take it, Thomas, and oblige the young lady. I'd do as much for our Jimmy any day if I had a spire of hair ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... 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 ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... yon rifted spire, As weary of the insulting air,— The poet's thoughts, the warrior's fire, The lover's sighs, are ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... snail is of a brightly shining yellowish or greenish horn colour. The whorls of its spire are small, but the body whorl, whilst preserving a wide diameter throughout, gradually increases in trumpet-like manner to the round mouth. It belongs to the same group with H. olivetorum and H. nitida, and is ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray |
