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noun
Pleiades  n. pl.  
1.
(Myth.) The seven daughters of Atlas and the nymph Pleione, fabled to have been made by Jupiter a constellation in the sky.
2.
(Astron.) A group of small stars in the neck of the constellation Taurus; called also the seven sisters. Note: Alcyone, the brightest of these, a star of the third magnitude, was considered by Mädler the central point around which our universe is revolving, but such a notion has been thoroughly discounted by modern observations. Only six pleiads are distinctly visible to the naked eye, whence the ancients supposed that a sister had concealed herself out of shame for having loved a mortal, Sisyphus.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pleiades" Quotes from Famous Books



... old Nocturnus went to bed this night in liquor. Why, the Great Bear hasn't moved a step anywhere in the sky, and the moon's just as it was when it first rose, and Orion's Belt, and the Evening Star, and the Pleiades aren't setting, either. Yes, the constellations are standing stock still, and no sign of ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius

... in Rome would have come to Crawford the vision of his "Orpheus" and of his noble Beethoven? or to Story his "Libyan Sibyl," and that exquisite group, "Into the Silent Land"? or to Vedder his marvellous creations of "The Fates Gathering in the Stars," the "Cumaean Sibyl," or the "Dance of the Pleiades"? to Simmons his triumphant "Angel of the Resurrection," and "The Genius of Progress Leading the Nations"? or to Stetson that ineffable vision of "The Child," and that wonderful group called "Music"? whose coloring Titian or Giorgione might ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... general, as is remarked above, the astronomical feature at solar epochs yielded to other associations. Occasional festivals occur in connection with the worship of stars (especially the morning star);[410] the Pleiades are objects of observation among some low tribes, and in some cases (Society Islands, Tahiti, Hawaii, New Zealand) the year began with the rising of these stars, but apparently no festivals are dedicated to them.[411] In the later theistic development various deities are brought into connection ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... a cook, And knew the sovereign good. Nature his study, While practice perfected his theory. Divine philosophy alone can teach The difference which the fish Glociscus[124] shows In winter and in summer: how to learn Which fish to choose, when set the Pleiades, And at the solstice. 'Tis change of seasons Which threats mankind, and shakes their changeful frame. This dost thou comprehend? Know, what we use In season, is ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... system in the heavens was (strange to say!) referred to an orbit about a prodigious star in the centre of the galaxy. About this star, or at all events about a centre of gravity common to all the globes of the Milky Way and supposed to be near Alcyone in the Pleiades, every one of these globes was declared to be revolving, our own performing the circuit in a period of 117,000,000 of years! We, with our present lights, our vast telescopic improvements, and so forth, of course ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... reaping crops that they begin to scan the heavens more carefully in order to determine the season of sowing by observation of the great celestial time-keepers, the rising and setting of certain constellations, above all, apparently, of the Pleiades.[188] In short, the rise of agriculture favours the rise ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... springs at which the soul may allay the thirst to know which is forever unquenchable within it—since to quench it would be to extinguish the soul's self. Question me then, my Oinos, freely and without fear. Come! we will leave to the left the loud harmony of the Pleiades, and swoop outward from the throne into the starry meadows beyond Orion, where, for pansies and violets, and heart's-ease, are the beds of the ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe

... one of those magnificent moments in the war which filled the soul with a strange and wild delight. For months we had been preparing for this event, and now it was upon us. The sky was growing lighter, and the constellation of the Pleiades was beginning to fade in the sky above the outline of the distant trees. I looked at my watch. Nearer and nearer the hands crept to zero hour, but they move slowly at such times. Then at 4.20 the long barrage burst in all its fury. The hissing rain of shells through ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... wastes across the Nile, swept up against the exposed side of the hotel, and made his windows rattle—the old, sad winds of Egypt. Henriot got out of bed to fasten the outside shutters. He stood a moment and watched the moon floating down behind the Sakkara Pyramids. The Pleiades and Orion's Belt hung brilliantly; the Great Bear was close to the horizon. In the sky above the Desert swung ten thousand stars. No sounds rose from the streets of Helouan. The tide of sand ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood

... at the stars again and saw the tight cluster of the Pleiades. Across the world, the constellation was just coming into view of anyone standing on top of the mountain known as El ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin

... his sleep appears serene, Whatever dreams it has brought him— [Looks at the plans.] If he knows what those hieroglyphics mean, He's wiser than one who taught him. Why does he number the Pole-star thus? Or the Pleiades why combine? And what is he doing with Sirius, In the devil's name or in mine? Man thinks, discarding the beaten track, That the sins of his youth are slain, When he seeks fresh sins, but he soon comes back To ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... in his East the glorious Lamp was seen, Regent of Day; and all th' Horizon round Invested with bright Rays, jocund to round His Longitude through Heavns high Road: the gray Dawn, and the Pleiades before him danced, Shedding sweet Influence. Less bright the Moon, But opposite in level'd West was set, His Mirror, with full face borrowing her Light From him, for other Lights she needed none In that aspect, and still that distance keeps Till Night; then in the East her turn she ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... expressions of one and the same force in the universe—that ultimate, all-encompassing, divine force (not to speak unscientifically) that upholds the order of the heavens, "binds the sweet influences of the Pleiades, brings forth Mazzaroth in his season, and ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... not alternated. When I have made giggle with Clara under the influence of the starry sky, did you suppose me giggling with Lyra or the Pleiades! I should dread to see the statue descend; it seemed irreverence even to gaze. The lofty serenity keeps me aloof. I like to believe in a creature too bright and good for human nature's daily food. Our profane squinting through telescopes at the Lady Moon reveals nothing but worn-out volcanoes ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... invented a form of the instrument for himself. Improving it gradually, he succeeded in making one that could magnify thirty times. Examining the moon, he found that she had valleys like those of the earth, and mountains casting shadows. It had been said in the old times that in the Pleiades there were formerly seven stars, but a legend related that one of them had mysteriously disappeared. On turning his telescope toward them, Galileo found that he could easily count not fewer than forty. In whatever direction he looked, he discovered stars ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... my quest forego; Enough for me to feel and know That He in whom the cause and end, The past and future, meet and blend,— Who, girt with his Immensities, Our vast and star-hung system sees, Small as the clustered Pleiades,— Moves not alone the heavenly quires, But waves the spring-time's grassy spires, Guards not archangel feet alone, But deigns to guide and keep my own; Speaks not alone the words of fate Which worlds destroy, and worlds create, But whispers ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... gallery could be used for the observation of any celestial body southing higher than 26 deg. 18' above the horizon; but not very effectively for objects passing near the zenith. The Pleiades could be well observed. They southed about 63-2/3 deg. above the horizon in the year 2140 B.C. or thereabouts when they were on the equinoctial colure.[46] But if I am right in taking the year 3300 B.C. when Alpha Centauri shone down ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... fortunate, and has been able to surround his administration with the talented men of his time—una pleiade incontable de hombres conspicuos, to quote from a Mexican description of his colleagues—"an innumerable pleiades of conspicuous men!" in their own grandiloquent phrases. As for the President, it might be supposed that the tendency to deify him by his contemporaries, and the constant pouring out of adulation and flattery upon him for the ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... of the candle-power of an electric bulb. What do they mean? It cannot have the faintest glimmer of the real power of my candle. It would be as right to express, in the same inverted and foolish comparison, the worth of "those delicate sisters, the Pleiades." That pinch of star dust, the Pleiades, exquisitely remote in deepest night, in the profound where light all but fails, has not the power of a sulphur match; yet, still apprehensive to the mind though ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson

... the peculiar disposition of certain stars, visible to the unaided eye, has struck philosophical observers. Mitchell has already remarked how little probable it is that the stars in the Pleiades, for example, could have been contracted into the small space which encloses them by the fortuity of chance alone, and he has concluded that this group of stars, and similar groups which the skies present to us, are the necessary result of the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... was so named from the abundance of Fennel (marathron) growing on it.[89:1] And like all strongly scented plants, it was supposed by the medical writers to abound in "virtues." Gower, describing the star Pleiades, says— ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... hours high, was the herald of the day; the Pleiades, just above the horizon, shed their sweet influence in the east; Lyra sparkled near the zenith; Andromeda veiled her newly-discovered glories from the naked eye in the south; the steady Pointers, far beneath the pole, looked meekly up from the depths of the north ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... and mother who is yet unprepared to join the growing circle of the family in heaven,—('how grows in Paradise their store!')—may, as we reach the last page, find that with cords of a man, with bands of love, He who made Pleiades, and Arcturus and his sons, has united them in eternal fellowship with their departed loved ones, through faith in Christ. This, while it hallows the remainder of life with the rich, mellowed beauty of the changing leaf, and ripening grain, and shortening days, lays the foundation of that ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams

... she deserved to taste the sweets would demand a more ruthless and unforgiving verdict upon one of the two unfortunates than I have the heart to render. The marriage had been the wedding of a near-sighted woman and a man who could see hardly anything nearer than the Pleiades. Neither was more to blame than the other for the fault of eyesight. It was simply ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes

... observed "Think of Manchester cotton in the Pleiades! Of Scotch whiskey in Orion! However, I am afraid your policy would lead to international complications. The French would set up a claim for 'Ancient Lights.' The Germans would discover a nebulous Hinterland under ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... affection lasted for twenty years without a collision or disappointment. Death alone could thin the numbers of the noble Pleiades, taking first Louis Lambert, later Meyraux and ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... exaggerate ingratitude to us. Ought we to require of those whom we have served, that they should be always confessing their obligations to us? Why should we care about neglect? 'Seek Him that maketh the Pleiades and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into morning, and maketh the day dark with night; that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford

... the seas That lap the plunging Pleiades Arise to spread afar The dream that was the soul of Greece? In ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis

... into this mirror, the poignancy of what we behold is strangely softened. After all, it is something, whatever becomes of us, to have been conscious of all this. It is something to have outwatched Arcturus, and felt "the sweet influences" of the Pleiades. Congruous with such a mood is the manner in which, while Mr. Hardy opposes himself to Christianity, he cannot forget it. He cannot "cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... saddle. Between Andromeda and her father, Cepheus, we find her mother, Cassiopeia, or rather Cassiopeia's Chair. (Of course b, a, and g mark the chair's back.) Perseus, the Rescuer, lies below; b is the famous variable Algol. Below him lies the Bull (Taurus), with the Pleiades and the bright Aldebaran. Low down to the left of the Bull, we find the Charioteer (Auriga), with the bright Capella. And lastly, anyone who likes may admire the Camelopard (Camelopardalis), between the Great Bear, Cepheus, and ...
— Half-Hours with the Stars - A Plain and Easy Guide to the Knowledge of the Constellations • Richard A. Proctor

... that they are whirling round on their central axis and concentrating. Further, we find in some of the gaseous nebulae (Orion) comparatively void spaces occupied by stars, which seem to have absorbed the nebulous matter in their formation. On the other hand, we find (in the Pleiades) wisps and streamers of nebulous matter clinging about great clusters of stars, suggesting that they are material left over when these clustered worlds crystallised out of some vast nebula; and enormous stretches of nebulous material covering regions (as in Perseus) where the stars are ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... that," continued the first; "I am troubled about our course. If we could leave the Pleiades a little more to the right, striking a middle course between Booetes and the ecliptic, we should find it all plain sailing as far as the solstitial colure. But once we get into the Zodiac upon our present bearing, we are certain to meet ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)

... disk in the ocean and the first manifestation of the zodiacal p 138 light, although the night was already perfectly dark. an hour after sunset it was seen in great briliancy between Aldebaran and the Pleiades; and on the 18th of March it attained an altitude of 39¼degrees5'minutes. Narrow elongated clouds are scattered over the beautiful deep azure of the distant horizon, flitting past the zodiacal light as before a golden curtain. Above these, other clouds are from time ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... wife shall bear twins—a daughter who must be your successor, and a son who must be subject to her and to her husband when she marries. Further, it is my will and pleasure that, beginning from her seventh year, you shall make, every month when the moon is in the constellation Krittika (or the Pleiades), a great festival, to be called the Festival of the Ball Dance, at which she shall publicly exhibit her skill before the people. I also will, that in reference to a husband, she shall have free choice without any pressure on your part, and ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob

... tree-cat, scalped, and full of arrows; a snake severed into sections; a Seneca tied to a post and a broken wampum belt at his feet. And on every tree they had also painted the symbol of their own clans and nation—pointed stones and the stars of the Pleiades; a witch-wolf and an enchanted bear; a yellow moth alighted on a white cross; a night-hawk, perfectly recognizable, soaring high above a sun, setting, bisecting ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... Dionysus their association with the antelope or deer may be extended to the bull. Miss Davis (op. cit.) states that in the Homa Yasht the deer-headed lunar mansion over which the god presides is spoken of as "leading the Paurvas," i.e. Pleiades: "Mazda brought to thee (Homa) the star-studded spirit-fashioned girdle (the belt of Orion) leading the Paurvas. Now the Bull-Dionysus was especially associated with the Pleiades on ancient gems and in classical mythology—which form ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... he was overcome by Achilles. When Aurora, who was watching him from the sky, saw him fall she sent his brothers, the Winds, to take his body to the banks of a river in Asia Minor. In the evening the mother and the Hours and the Pleiades came to weep over her dead son. Poor Aurora! even to-day her tears are seen in the dewdrops on the grass ...
— The Children's Book of Celebrated Pictures • Lorinda Munson Bryant

... South-wind. Fire-Child. A synonym of Panu. Frost. The English for Pakkanen. Hal'lap-yo'ra. A lake in Finland. Hal'ti-a (plural Haltiat). The Genius of Finnish mythology. Het'e-wa'ne. The Finnish name of the Pleiades. Hi'si (original Hiisi). The Evil Principle; also called Jutas, Lempo, and Piru. Mon'ja-tar. The daughter of the Pine-tree. Hor'na. A sacred rock in Finland. I'ku-Tur'so. An evil giant of the sea. Il'ma-ri'nem. The worker of the metals; a brother of Wainamoinen. Il'ma-tar. Daughter of ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... feasts. But although the sun was the supreme deity, other objects were also worshipped as subordinate deities. These objects, however, were generally in some manner representative of sun attributes; for example, the Moon was worshipped as the spouse of the Sun, Venus as his page. The pleiades and other constellations, and single stars were also deified; the rainbow and the lightning were sun servants, the elements, the sun's offspring. Many animals and trees were reverenced as representatives of sun attributes. Above all, ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier

... commonly sought after such things quae nec percipi a nobis neque comprehendi posset, or put case they did understand, yet they were altogether unprofitable. For what matter is it for us to know how high the Pleiades are, how far distant Perseus and Cassiopeia from us, how deep the sea, &c., we are neither wiser, as he follows it, nor modester, nor better, nor richer, nor stronger for the knowledge of it. Quod supra nos nihil ad, nos, I may say the same of those genethliacal ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... there are the Pleiades, showing to the naked eye only six or seven stars. In the telescope the Pleiades appear as ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor

... delightful, and the air so clear, that when the moon is young, I can often distinguish the whole circle, thus; O. You and Robert may look for this some fine night, but I do not remember ever to have observed it in England. The stars appear more brilliant here, but I often look up at the Pleiades, and remember how much happier I was when I saw them in Bristol. Fare you well. Let me know that ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... thy perfections: thy body is as fair as an angel's; no painter could design it. And if any man be sad, he has but to look on thee, and despite himself he takes courage, the hapless one, and his heart is joyous. Upon thy brows are shining the constellated Pleiades, thy breast is full of the flowers of May, thy breasts are lilies. Thou hast the eyes of a princess, the glance of a queen, and but one fault hast thou, that thou deignest not to speak ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang

... is a courtyard, bounded by four square walls, a path or two to walk in, and the eyes of busybodies to order our doings and sneer us out of our souls. How they deny us that the centre of the systems is immeasurably off there in Pleiades! What fools we are. We follow trifles we value at the valuation of idiots; we cherish mean ideas; we believe contracted doctrines; we do things we are ashamed of; dropping at last like the animals, with ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair

... the worlds with the foam of what ambrosial liquor may have been within. Beyond, a Spanish goddess, some minor deity in the Dionysian theogony, dances continually, rapt and mysterious, to the music of the spheres, her head in Cassiopeia and her twinkling feet among the Pleiades. And near her, Orion, archer no longer, releases himself from his strained posture to drive a sidereal golf-ball out of sight through the meadows of Paradise; then poses, ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke

... silver altars and adoration the moon, which they call the consort of the sun, and certain stars, which they term the handmaids of the moon: but their most singular idea is that the Pleiades represent their grandfather; and "as that constellation disappears at certain periods from the sky of South America, upon such occasions they suppose that their grandfather is sick, and are under a yearly apprehension that he is going to ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... of thy voyce. And were I on the axeltree of heaven To note the Zodiaks anuall chaunge and course, The Sunns bryghte progresse and the planetts motyons, To play with Luna or newe lampe the starres, To note Orion or the Pleiades, Or with the sunne guyld the Antipodes,— Yet all the glorye, in exchaunge for thee, Would be ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various

... God's Word clothed in Syllables of Unsurpassable Sweetness—He that holdeth the Pleiades in His Right Hand—Blissful Forecasts—Shall God weigh out Arcturus to Stop the Unreasoning Clamor of the Fool who Hath Said in His Heart there Is ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern

... the right wing of darkness. And there is Mercury, like a lighted cresset shaken by the winds, flapping his violet wings above the Northeastern horizon; and Mars, like a piece of gold held out by the trembling hand of a miser, is sinking in the blue of the sea with Neptune; the Pleiades are stepping on the trail of the blushing moon; the Balance lingers behind to weigh the destinies of the heroes who are to contend with the dawn; while Venus, peeping from her tower over Mt. Sanneen, is sending love vibrations to all. I would tell thee more if I knew. But I swear to thee I never ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... dust. Where'er I have my rhymes, thence vermin fly, All, saving that foul-fac'd vermin poverty. This sucks the eggs of my invention, Evacuates my wit's full pigeon-house. Now may it please thy generous dignity To take this vermin napping, as he lies In the true trap of liberality, I'll cause the Pleiades to give thee thanks; I'll write thy name within the sixteenth sphere: I'll make th'Antarctic pole to kiss thy toe. And Cynthia to do homage ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... the Equator in Long. 159 degrees 44', but in consequence of the misty weather it was not till we reached Lat. 10 degrees 6' N. that the Pole star, cold and pure, glistened far above the horizon, and two hours later we saw the coruscating Pleiades, and the starry belt of Orion, the blessed familiar constellations of "auld lang syne," and a "breath of the cool north," the first I have felt for five months, fanned the tropic night and the calm silvery Pacific. From that time we have been indifferent to our crawling pace, except for the ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... glorious spectacle as I entered the train. As we proceeded, the timid approach of twilight became more perceptible; the intense blue of the sky began to soften; the smaller stars, like little children, went first to rest; the sister-beams of the Pleiades soon melted together; but the bright constellations of the west and north remained unchanged. Steadily the wondrous transfiguration went on. Hands of angels, hidden from mortal eyes, shifted the scenery of the heavens; ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... and Mr. Yule* [I am indebted to Mr. Inglis for most of this information relating to the Khasias, which I have since found, with much more that is curious and interesting, in a paper by Lieut. Yule in Bengal Asiat. Soc. Journal.] (who is my authority) says that the Pleiades are called "the Hen-man" (as in Italy "the chickens"); also that they have names for the twelve months; they do not divide their time by weeks, but hold a market every four days. These people are industrious, and good cultivators of rice, millet, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... ferocious Rhoeti: how worthy of admiration in the field of battle, [to see] with what destruction he oppressed the brave, hearts devoted to voluntary death: just as the south wind harasses the untameable waves, when the dance of the Pleiades cleaves the clouds; [so is he] strenuous to annoy the troops of the enemy, and to drive his eager steed through the midst of flames. Thus the bull-formed Aufidus, who washes the dominions of the Apulian Daunus, rolls along, when he rages ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... river with a thrust forward of his head. He was not a religious man, and in his six years' woods experience had never been to church. Now he looked up over the tops of the pines to where the Pleiades glittered faintly among ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... sunset, the sky darkened rapidly—there was a very brief twilight interval indeed—and the stars shone out. They were recognisably the same as those we see, arranged in the same constellations. Mr. Cave recognised the Bear, the Pleiades, Aldebaran, and Sirius: so that the other world must be somewhere in the solar system, and, at the utmost, only a few hundreds of millions of miles from our own. Following up this clue, Mr. Wace learned that the midnight sky was a darker blue even than our midwinter ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... may, says Mr. Lang, conceivably have been invented separately, therefore it is not surprising to find the star-stories of savages closely resembling those of civilized races. The story of the lost sister of the Pleiades, according to the Greek myth, finds a parallel in a tradition among the Australians. Of star-lore generally, it may be said that it is much the same even among the Bushmen of Africa, as it was among the Greeks and Egyptians, and as it is ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor

... me! ("Hear, hear!" from the honourable friend)—it is the business of competent statesmen to preserve relations friendly yet firm with foreign Powers terrestrial and celestial, and we shall do it, sir, if we have to annex the Pleiades (cheers). To illustrate by a single case the urgency of an action which the honourable member, in his own choice and happy phraseology, stigmatised as a wild-goose chase. If a Power which I will not specify is allowed to occupy that interesting orb which it is our hope to link closely ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang

... was another trench excavated athwart the gloom; an unbroken chain of stars shone forth down the Champs-Elysees from the Arc-de-Triomphe to the Place de la Concorde, where a new cluster of Pleiades was flashing; next came the gloomy stretches of the Tuileries and the Louvre, the blocks of houses on the brink of the water, and the Hotel-de-Ville away at the extreme end—all these masses of darkness being parted here and ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... tormented heart be healed, alas, of thee? The Pleiades were nearer far than is thy grace to me. Distance estrangement, longing pain and fire of love laid waste, Procrastination and delay, in these my life doth flee. For no attainment bids me live nor exile slays me quite, Travel no nigher doth me bring, nor wilt thou nearer be. There is ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous

... first the Initiates met. It was the day of the full moon, of the month Boëdromion; when the moon was full at the end of the sign Aries, near the Pleiades and the place of her exaltation ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... had recited was more singularly applicable to their case than that which they paid heed to. "The great stars that globed themselves in Heaven," were shining clear and bright in the vast arch above. Resplendent amidst the throng rose the Pleiades, the mythological seven hailed by the Greeks as an augury of safe navigation. And the Dyaks—one of the few remaining savage races of the world—share the superstition of the people who fashioned all the arts and ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... hath begotten the drops of dew? Out of whose womb came the ice? And the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it? The waters are hidden as with stone, And the face of the deep is frozen. Canst thou bind the cluster of the Pleiades, Or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou lead forth the signs of the Zodiac in their season? Or canst thou guide the Bear with her train? Knowest thou the ordinances of the heavens? Canst thou establish the dominion thereof in the earth? Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, That abundance ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various

... is playing in this Paris Pandemonium, or City of All the Devils!—And yet the Night, as Mayor Petion walks here in the Tuileries Garden, 'is beautiful and calm;' Orion and the Pleiades glitter down quite serene. Petion has come forth, the 'heat' inside was so oppressive. (Roederer, Chronique de Cinquante Jours: Recit de Petion. Townhall Records, &c. in Hist. Parl. xvi. 399-466.) Indeed, his ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... Shining up through the long grasses, the five-pointed white stars of the little marsh bell-flower are no more dismayed by the stately beauty of the tall blue bell-flower over the fence, with its long strings of blossoms set on edge like dainty Delft-blue saucers, than the Pleiades are shamed by the splendor of Aldebaran and Betelguese on a bright night in November. Clover-like heads of the milkwort decorate the bank, and among the mosses around the bases of the trees the little shin-leaf ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell

... that he has received a fresh supply of Dimitry Bruisgins? But to none of us does the Present continue miraculous (even if for a moment discerned as such). We glance carelessly at the sunrise, and get used to Orion and the Pleiades. The wonder wears off, and to-morrow this sheet, (Acts x. 11, 12) in which a vision was let down to me from Heaven, shall be the wrappage to a bar of soap or the platter ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... Maleu, Vutamaleu, Ragiantu, Culunantu, Gullantu, Conantu, Guvquenantu, Puni, Ragipun. The stars in general are named huaglen, which they distribute into constellations called pal or ritha. The pleiades are named Cajupal, or the constellation of six; the antarctic cross Meleritho, the Constellation of four, and so on. The milky-way is named Rupuepen, the fabulous road. The planets are called gau, a word derived from gaun to wash, as they suppose ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... from their serene spaces; like Eyes glistening with heavenly tears over the little lot of man! Thousands of human generations, all as noisy as our own, have been swallowed up of Time, and there remains no wreck of them any more; and Arcturus and Orion and Sirius and the Pleiades are still shining in their courses, clear and young, as when the Shepherd first noted them in the plain of Shinar. Pshaw! what is this paltry little Dog-cage of an Earth; what art thou that sittest whining there? Thou art still Nothing, Nobody: true; but who, then, is Something, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... used for the soldiers on watch during the day upon the walls of a fortress. Birch believed he had discovered in the British Museum a catalogue of observations made at Thebes by several astronomers upon a constellation which answered to the Hyades or the Pleiades; it was merely a question in this text of the quantity of water supplied regularly to the astronomers of a Theban temple for their ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... given to the soldiers, exhausted with toil and fighting: and several beasts of burden, which had fallen down among the rocks, by following the track of the army arrived at the camp. A fall of snow, it being now the season of the setting of the constellation of the Pleiades, caused great fear to the soldiers, already worn out with weariness of so many hardships. On the standards being moved forward at daybreak, when the army proceeded slowly over all places entirely blocked up with snow, and languor and despair strongly appeared in the countenances of all, Hannibal, ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius

... must have seven, A cluster like the Pleiades, And lo! it happens, as with these, That one is missing from our heaven. Where is the Landlord? Bring him here; Let ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... geometry so well that he measured the circumference of the earth. Callimachus was in fact one of those erudite poets and wise men of letters whom the gay Alexandrians who thronged the court of Ptolemy Philadelphus called "The Pleiades." Apollonius Rhodius, Aratus, Theocritus, Lycophron, Nicander, and Homer son of Macro, were the other six. From his circle of clever people, the king, with whom he had become a prime favorite, called him to be chief custodian over the stores of precious books at Alexandria. These libraries, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... 13. Pleiads, or Pleiades: a group of stars in the constellation Taurus; only six stars of the group are readily visible, but legend tells of a seventh, lost. Read the account of the ancient myth ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill

... of six, a willow Pleiades, The seventh fallen, that lean along the brink Where the steep upland dips ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... the zenith, and second only to the Cross in brilliancy, appeared the Northern Crown, consisting of seven large stars, so disposed as to form the outline of two-thirds of an oval. Of the familiar constellations of the northern hemisphere, scarcely one was visible, except Orion, and the Pleiades. ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... Looking overhead, as she went on, her gaze swept the heavens with that sense of absolute stillness which comes under the solitude of the sky, and standing presently in the dust of the road, she fixed her eyes upon the Pleiades shining softly far above the jagged line of the horizon. Her feet ached beneath her, but her head seemed suddenly spinning through clear spaces among the stars, and while she stood there, she felt that the distance between her ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... planets are known and named. Fetu is the word used to designate all heavenly bodies except the sun and moon. Venus is called the morning and evening star. Mars is the Matamemea, or the star with the sear-leafed face. The Pleiades are called Lii or Mataalii, eyes of chiefs. The belt of Orion is the amonga, or burden carried on a pole across the shoulders. The milky way is ao lele, ao to'a, and the aniva. Ao lele, means flying cloud, and ao to'a, solid cloud. Meteors ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner

... rapidly along the broad road beside a river. There were hills in the distance and the air from them was in the key of the Pleiades. There were gardens everywhere full of sunlight translated into flowers, and without an effort one divined the harmony of growing things. I felt that something was about to happen; I knew it, but I did not care to ask what ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various

... Fire betakes himself, tells his story, and begs to be relieved of his burden. Indra advises him to deposit it in the Ganges. Fire therefore travels to the Ganges, leaves Shiva's seed in the river, and departs much relieved. But now it is the turn of Ganges to be distressed, until at dawn the six Pleiades come to bathe in the river. They find Shiva's seed and lay it in a nest of reeds, where it becomes a child, Kumara, the ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa

... sunset: there was no moon visible, but an irradiance was omnipresent, and showed the muffled yew-tree walks, and the greater trees colossal, mountains overshadowing the land. Here and there, as you went, glimmered daffodils, like the Pleiades half-veiled, and long files of crocuses burned ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett

... glassy, mottled floor, Far clouds uprear their gleaming battlements Drawn to the crest of some bleak eminence, When autumn twilight fades on the sere hill And autumn winds are still; To watch the East for some emerging sign, Wintry Capella or the Pleiades Or that great huntsman with the golden gear; Ravished in hours like these Before thy universal shrine To feel the invoked presence hovering near, He stands enthusiastic. Star-lit hours Spent on the roads of wandering solitude Have ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger

... meteorology even by Europeans unconsciously: thus they will speak of the Elephantina-storm without knowing anything of the lunar mansion so called. The names in the text are successively Sharatntwo horns of the Ram; (2) the Ram's belly; (3) the Pleiades; (4) Aldebaran; (5) three stars in Orion's head; (6) ditto in Orion's shoulder; (7) two stars above the Twins; (8) Lion's nose and first summer station; (9) Lion's eye; (1O) Lion's forehead; (11) Lion's mane; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... Dawnchild all the gods made Themselves stars for torches, and far away through all the sky followed the tracks of Night as far as he prowled abroad. And at one time Slid, with the Pleiades in his hand, came nigh to the golden ball, and at another Yoharneth-Lahai, holding Orion for a torch, but lastly Limpang Tung, bearing the morning star, found the golden ball far away under the world near to the lair ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... ivy—from the morning tread of the reapers, and the mower's lunch of bread and cheese under the meadow elm, and you take away a living and beautiful spirit more charming than music. You take away from English poetry one of its pleiades, and bereave it of a companionship more intimate than that of the nearest neighborhood of the stars above. How the lark's life and song blend, in the rhyme of the poet, with "the sheen of silver fountains leaping to the sea," with morning sunbeams and noontide thoughts, with ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... First in his East the glorious Lamp was seen, 370 Regent of Day, and all th' Horizon round Invested with bright Rayes, jocond to run His Longitude through Heav'ns high rode: the gray Dawn, and the Pleiades before him danc'd Shedding sweet influence: less bright the Moon, But opposite in leveld West was set His mirror, with full face borrowing her Light From him, for other light she needed none In that aspect, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... potency of the tiny herbs themselves that I have the sight. It is admirable, this potent patience of these wee things that are born in bogs yet in their own world grow stars the memory of which lasts as long in the consciousness of man as does that of the Pleiades. If you pluck them you will see by turning them over that these constellations are as whitely bright to small eyes that look from below, from the ooze of the bog or the roots of marsh grass, as they are to our great eyes ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... incredible that the relations of the heavenly bodies to each other at a given moment of time, perhaps half a century ago, should have anything to do with my success or misfortune in any undertaking of to-day. But what right have I to say it cannot be so? Can I bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? I do not know by what mighty magic the planets roll in their fluid paths, confined to circles as unchanging as if they were rings of steel, nor why the great wave of ocean follows in a sleepless round upon the skirts of moonlight; nor ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... placed in the focus of a lens, gives very accurate measurements of the diameters of celestial objects. It was successfully used by Gascoigne in determining the apparent diameters of the Sun, Moon, and several of the planets, and the mutual distances of the stars which form the Pleiades. ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... strength and range of vision that were perfectly surprising. He enjoyed, in common with Moestlin, Kepler's professor, the rare faculty of distinguishing the satellites of Jupiter with the naked eye, and of counting fourteen of the stars in the group of Pleiades, the remotest of them being only of the ninth magnitude. He presumed none the more for that; on the contrary, he made his bow to you, at a distance, and when occasion arose he bravely knew how to use ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... lovers who were separated in death and placed on different spheres, and who built the Milky Way as a bridge so they could communicate with each other. Nyoda had taught the girls the three ways the Indians had of testing eyesight, namely, by reproducing the spots on the rabbit, counting the Pleiades, and spying out the little companion star to the one in the handle of the Big Dipper, the pair which the Arabs call the Horse and Rider, and the girls would not rest until they, too, had caught sight of the tiny point ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey

... ship. When the great heat set in the men were allowed to sleep on deck, and Dion lay all night long under the wheeling stars, and often thought of the stars above Drouva, and heard Rosamund's voice saying, "I can see the Pleiades." ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... heavens for a text and found one in the Pleiades. And I told her how these were seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione who herself was the daughter of the Sea, and how they were all pure maidens, save one, and were the companions of Artemis; how Orion the ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... as teachable as the hand. Every one knows the most prominent constellations,—the Pleiades, the Great Bear, and Orion. Many persons can draw the figures made by the most brilliant stars in these constellations, and very many young people look for the 'lost Pleiad.' But common observers know ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell

... the water, the angel of the rivers, the angel of the mountains, the angel of the hills, the angel of the abysses, the angel of the deserts, the angel of the sun, the angel of the moon, the angel of the Pleiades, the angel of Orion, the angel of the herbs, the angel of Paradise, the angel of Gehenna, the angel of the trees, the angel of the reptiles, the angel of the wild beasts, the angel of the domestic animals, the angel of the ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... know the coffined what comes after them, Even though it whirl them to the Pleiades?— Turn ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... When the Pleiades had risen, Nebenchari was to be found seated alone in one of the magnificent rooms assigned to his use on the eastern side of the palace, near to Kassandane's apartments. The friendly manner in which he had welcomed his old servant had given place to the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... has brought the laurel-leaves to crown The star-discoverer's name with high, renown; Accept the flower of love we lay with these For influence sweeter than the Pleiades! ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke

... seen in the distance, experiment again, is the best judge. The human eye is so very different in each man that even the acute examination into what is known of the visual image of the Pleiades shows that the *average visual capacity of classic periods is no different from our own, but still that there was great variety in visual capacity. What enormous visual power is attributed to half-civilized ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... was the wife of the great sage Vasishtha, and regarded as the pattern of conjugal excellence. She was raised to the heavens as one of the Pleiades. ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... a height of 8,000 feet, and known as the chain of Taygetus. Now, the nymph from whom that mountain ridge is named was the mother of Lacedaemon; therefore the mythic ancestress of the Spartan race. She is the nymph Taygeta, and one of the seven stars of spring; one of those Pleiades of whom is the question to Job,—"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?" "The sweet influences of Pleiades," of the stars of spring,—nowhere sweeter than among the pine-clad slopes of the hills of Sparta and Arcadia, ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... swamps of my own passions and sensualities, or from the as malarious though loftier grounds of my own self-regard, be I student or thinker, or moral man, there rise up these light mists, they will fill the sky and hide the sun. On a winter's night you will see the Pleiades, or other bright constellations, varying in brilliancy from moment to moment as some invisible cloud-wrack floats across the heavens. So, brother, every evil thing that we do rises up and gets diffused through our atmosphere, and blots out from our vision the face of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... disturb. The priests who buried him declare that he has been turned into a golden nightingale, and that there must be no noise or romping in the garden for three days, as not till then will he have arrived safely at the Appleiades. That is the name they give to the Pleiades—the seven golden islands whither pass the souls of dead mice and birds and dolls and where Scarlatti lives and where you, too, may expect to go if you please them. Even the black cat will probably go there—one's own black cat. But not the neighbour's cat—the ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd

... at the travellers,—on till the low, broad sea opened out the view, and came sobbing up on the beach, wailing at its own cruel deeds,—on beneath the cloudless night, upon whose front blazed Orion and the Pleiades,—on until the scene had wrought its charm, and the frequent speech fell to scattered words, to silent thought, to passionate feeling, where swelling heart and dim eyes alone uttered the soul's response to earth's perfect ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... high, was the herald of the day; the [v]Pleiades, just above the horizon, shed their sweet influence in the east; Lyra sparkled near the [v]zenith; Andromeda veiled her newly discovered glories from the naked eye in the south; the steady Pointers, far beneath the pole, looked meekly ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... divide the year into twelve months, although only seven [sc. eight] of these have names; they are lunar months, because they are reckoned by moons. The first month is that in which the Pleiades appear, which they call Ulalen. The second is called Dagancahuy, the time when the trees are felled in order to sow the land. Another month they call Daganenan bulan; it comes when the wood of those trees is ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various

... The Pleiades and the twenty millions of suns that form our own galaxy and the Milky Way, with all their varied colours, tints, and hues of white, golden, orange, ruby, red and blue, green and grey, silver, purple and yellow, buff and fawn, emerald and green, lilac and coppery. Thus we see the ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper

... of Callisto, first changed into a bear and then into a constellation) are familiar to most readers, a few examples of Sanskrit star-stories are offered here from the Satapatha Brahmana.(2) Fires are not, according to the Brahmana ritual, to be lighted under the stars called Krittikas, the Pleiades. The reason is that the stars were the wives of the bears (Riksha), for the group known in Brahmanic times as the Rishis (sages) were originally called the Rikshas (bears). But the wives of the bears were ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... descendant of AEolus, married Merope, one of the Pleiades, who bore him Glaucus. He resided at Ephyra, in Peloponnesus, and was conspicuous for his craft. Some say he was a Trojan secretary, who was punished for discovering secrets of state; whilst others contend that ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway

... the art of Mathematics, astounds the world with its achievements, and holds in one hand the balances with which it weighs the sun, and in the other the chain with which it surveys the distance to the Pleiades. ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor

... the way where light dwelleth, And as for darkness, what is the place thereof? Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, Or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his seasons? Or canst thou guide Arcturus, with his sons? Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth? Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... Attalus, founder and king of Fiesole, was of very brilliant origin, being no less than one of the Pleiades, and the only one of the sisters who seems to have married into a patriarchal family. "The reason why the seven stars are seven is a pretty reason"; but it is not "because they are not eight," as Lear suggests, but, as we now discover by patient investigation, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... along a straight line, or in an enormous orbit around some centre. The idea has been put forward that it may be moving around the centre of gravity of the whole visible stellar universe. Maedler, indeed, propounded the notion that Alcyone—the chief star in the group known as the Pleiades—occupied this centre, and that everything revolved around it. He went even further to proclaim that here was the Place of the Almighty, the Mansion of the Eternal! But Maedler's ideas upon this ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage

... visited upon us in our school-days, in expiation of the sins of our forefathers, there nourished seven poets at the court of Ptolemy Philadelphus. Royal favor and amiable dispositions united them in a club: public applause and self-appreciation led them to call it The Pleiades. In the middle of the sixteenth century, Pierre Ronsard, emulous of Greek fame, took to him six other poets more wretched than himself, and made up a second Pleiades for France. The third rising of this rhythmical constellation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... the Pleiades or the Big Dipper—no, get me Canis Major—'where Sirius, brightest jewel in the diadem of the firmament, holds sway'," she quoted. "There! Thought I'd forgotten all the astronomy you ever taught me, didn't you? ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... beyond dulling their brightness, for the ice as it melted put out the fire. The two ice-maidens were miserable on earth with him, and eventually escaped by the aid of one of their 'multiplex totems,' the pine-tree. Wurrunnah had told them to get him pine bark. Now the Meamei—Pleiades—belong to the Beewee totem, so does the pine-tree. They chopped the pine bark, and as they did so the tree telescoped itself to the sky where the five other Meamei were, whom they now joined, and with whom they have remained ever since. But they who were polluted by their enforced ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker

... of the vegetation, the rumpling of the leaves resulting in the turning of the under side toward the sun, and those trifling disarrangements which you or I would never notice, can be identified by what may be called an off-hand scrutiny, possibly on the same principle that a careless glance at Pleiades will reveal each of the seven stars, when if the gaze is fixed on the matchless group, one of ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis



Words linked to "Pleiades" :   cluster, clustering, Taurus, nymph, Greek mythology, bunch, clump, Asterope



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