"Spire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with a crown of thorns. The different sides of the Chapelle are in the same style—with buttresses between the windows, gables surmounting these, and a fine open parapet crowning all. The roof is sloping, and the height is over a hundred feet. The spire measures, from the vaulting, seventy feet. We entered by a stair-case the upper chapel, and an exquisite view presented itself. A single apartment, a half-circular chair, with fine, large windows, detached columns with bases and capitals, and fine groining—these all strike ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... another whirl; your point of original impetus being the grossly material, not at all the spiritual. It is most true that sentimentalism springs from the former, merely and badly aping the latter,—fine flower, or pinnacle flame-spire, of sensualism that it is, could it do other? and accompanying the former it traverses tracts of desert here and there couching in a garden, catching with one hand at fruits, with another at colours; imagining a secret ahead, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... flower the relative position of the sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils, as well as their intimate structure, are intelligible on the view that they consist of metamorphosed leaves, arranged in a spire. In monstrous plants, we often get direct evidence of the possibility of one organ being transformed into another; and we can actually see, during the early or embryonic stages of development in flowers, as well ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... rode along the ridge whence the West became visible, and a washed edge of red over Beckley Church spire and the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in the shadows Listened in every spray, While the whole camp with little Nell, on English meadows, Wandered and lost their way. Lost is that camp and wasted all its fire, And he who wro't that spell; Ah, towering pine and stately Kentish spire, Ye have one tale to tell. Lost is that camp, but let its fragrant story Blend with the breath that thrills With hop vines' incense all the pensive glory That fills the Kentish hills. And on that grave where English oak and holly And laurel wreath ...
— Life's Enthusiasms • David Starr Jordan
... one more liturgical question, and, in addition, a proposition boldly practical in the Kyrie, the spire of your Cathedral. The inspiration and structure of it are certainly admirable..."omnia excelsa tua et fluctus tui super me transierunt." Nevertheless, during these 300 bars, about, of a slow and ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... about the people who lived in it, just as if they were talking about people they knew quite well. And now came a little town, the town of Wanwick mother called it, right among the mountains, with a river running round it, and a tall church spire. It began to get darker and darker, and the trees hung down over the road, so that the children could hardly see. On they went, and Olly was very nearly asleep again, when the carriage began to crunch over gravel, and then it stopped, and father called out—"Here we are, ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... promontory to watch the sunrise. Deep down in the canyons below, darkness still lingered. Slowly the world emerged from the shadows like a photographic plate developing and disclosing its images in the darkroom. Beyond the promontory a great spire lifted high above the canyon; I climbed to its top. Above the spire was a higher crag. Again I climbed up. Up and up I climbed until almost noon. Each new vantage point revealed new glory; every successive outpost lured ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... in 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 ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... now acknowledge that it is easier to conquer by obedience than with arms," he said. Then, exacting their oaths of allegiance, placing the imperial eagle upon the spire of the cathedral, and taking with him three hundred hostages, he marched away, with the confident belief that the defiant resistance of Milan ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... step down yonder lane, And the little church stands near, The church where we were wed, Mary, I see the spire from here. But the graveyard lies between, Mary, And my step might break your rest— For I've laid you, darling! down to sleep, With your baby on ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... house in this village is oblong, but at the two ends of the roof, spire-like tops are affixed, similar to those on the rest of the huts in the village. They are not ornamental nor useful, but interesting as marking a native characteristic on a house copied from those in the ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... the village the church stood high, its spire clearly defined against the blue of the sky. The door of the cafe across the road opened, and the proprietress, a merry-faced, elderly woman, came across to the farmhouse. She purchased some newly laid eggs for breakfast, and entered into conversation with our men, some of ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... in his "History of Ely Cathedral," says, that one of the earliest spires of which we have any account, "is that of old St. Paul's, finished in the year 1222." This spire was of timber covered with lead; "but, not long after, they began to build them of stone, and to finish all their buttresses in the same manner." Mr. Murphy observes that spires were introduced in the 12th century, about ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various
... I dream By day or night Lives in that stream Of lovely light. Here is the earth, And there is the spire; This is my hearth, And that is my fire. From the sun's dome I am shouted proof That this is my home, And that is my roof. Here is my food, And here is my drink, And I am wooed From the moon's brink. And the days go over, And the nights end; Here is my lover, Here is my friend. All that I Could ...
— Nets to Catch the Wind • Elinor Wylie
... floating noiselessly about in an exquisite confusion, and distant strains of music, as Hannah said they sang, filled my listening ears. I felt myself being lifted gently by tender, unseen hands, and I wondered whether they would bear me far up above spire and tower, away from all the worries of this desolate world, into that happy sphere beyond where all is peace, ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... clusters of the bending vine) Shone in the early light, when on the Rhine We bounded, and the white waves round the prow In murmurs parted:—varying as we go, Lo! the woods open, and the rocks retire, As some gray convent-wall or glistening spire 'Mid the bright landscape's track unfolding slow! Here dark, with furrowed aspect, like Despair, Frowns the bleak cliff! There on the woodland's side The shadowy sunshine pours its streaming tide; Whilst Hope, enchanted with the scene so fair, Counts not the hours of a long summer's day, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... caves of storage under the roofs, the red church spire, the clinking of hammers in the forges, the slow stamping of oxen-all spoke of sleepy toil, without ideas or ambition. Harz knew it all too well; like the earth's odour, it belonged to him, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... shot past with its quivering, long-drawn hum, like an insect tuning-fork. As the friends topped each rise which leads up to the Crystal Palace, they could see the dun clouds of London stretching along the northern skyline, with spire or dome breaking through the low-lying haze. The Admiral was in high spirits, for the morning post had brought good news to ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a scene!—Can this be Venice? No. And yet methinks it is—because I see Amid the lumps of yellow, red, and blue Something which looks like a Venetian spire. ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... and thou art bold; Nay, heap not the dying fire; It warms not me, I am too cold, Cold as the churchyard spire; If thou cover me up with fold on fold, Thou kill'st not ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... the train whirled rapidly through the scarcely-awakened country, and she had seen the soft and beautiful landscapes of the South lit up by the early sunlight. How the bright little villages shone, with here and there a gilt weathercock glittering on the spire of some small gray church, while as yet in many valleys a pale gray mist lay along the bed of the level streams or clung to the dense woods on the upland heights! Which was the more beautiful—the sharp, clear picture, with its brilliant colors and its awakening life, or the more ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... around with two ribbons with the end 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 Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... towns Crawling out of their green shirts... Tubercular towns Coughing a little in the dawn... And the church... There is always a church With its natty spire And the vestibule— That's where they whisper: Tzz-tzz... tzz-tzz... tzz-tzz... How many codes for a wireless whisper— And corn flatter than it should be And those chits of leaves Gadding with every wind? Small towns From ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... the floor The chil-dren build with wood-en bricks, They've placed two pil-lars by the door, And on the roof they now would fix A good tall spire, so Et-ty takes A long-er brick, and sets it there; And though when-e'er we walk it shakes, It ...
— The Infant's Delight: Poetry • Anonymous
... by: and entering the dear green lane which led directly to the village, 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 mother's grave! Sorrow gave place to devotional ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... gentes, and Lactance in the De falsa religione. If Juvenal, Martial, Petronius, are more reticent, it is because they were not Fathers of the Church, nor yet antiquarians. No one among us exacts a description of a spire. The phallus was as common to them, commoner even. It was on the coins, on the doors, in the gardens. As a preservative against Envy it hung from children's necks. On sun-dials and water clocks it marked the flight ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... two years child— Chrisom child." "Who's Mike?" my brother growled A little roughly. Quoth the fisherman— "Mike, Sir? he's just a fisher lad, no more; But he can sing, when he takes on to sing, So loud there's not a sparrow in the spire But needs must hear. Sir, if I might make bold, I'd ask what song that was you sung. My mate, As we were shoving off the mackerel boats, Said he, 'I'll wager that's the sort o' song They kept their hearts up with in ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... whimsicality. "For a minute she was like an industrious hornet. Then I made her see she wouldn't have been here at all if I hadn't opened it. That made, her come down from the top of her nest on the church-spire, and she said that, considering my opportunities, I was not such an aboriginal ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... broad flights of steps. Immediately above the dome is the entrance to the crypt of the basilica; and, above that again, reached by further flights of steps, are the doors of the basilica; and, above it, the roof of the church itself, with its soaring white spire high ...
— Lourdes • Robert Hugh Benson
... 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 forced ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... 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 mansions ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... rites performed duly, the dust thrice sprinkled on the body, and the farewell pronounced, the corpse was laid upon the pile, and the tall spire of blood-red flame went up, wavering and streaming through the night, rich with perfumes, and gums, and precious ointment, so noble was the liberality of the good Consul, even in the interment of his ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... close of a long day's journey, while the twilight gave a mysterious hue to a scene in itself singular and stately.—Glistening spire on spire; massive piles, which in the deepening haze might be either prisons or palaces; vast ranges of buildings, gloomy or glittering as the partial ray fell on them; with the solemn beauty of the Invalides on one wing, the light and lovely ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... way than this Swiss borderland, reached after a long stretch of dreary country; here we have grace without severity, beauty without gloom, pastoral hills and dales alive with the tinkling of cattle-bells, and pleasingly diversified with villages scattered here and there; a church spire rising above the broad-roofed, white-washed chalets on every side, undulating green pastures, in some places shut in by pine-clad ridges, in others by smiling green hills. We see patches of corn still too green to cut, also bits of beet-root, maize, hemp, and potatoes; the chief produce ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... later, when Dr. Corrie, Archdeacon of Calcutta, was consecrated first Bishop of Madras, the church became 'the Cathedral Church of St. George.' St. George's Cathedral is a stately building, with a spire 139 feet high, and it stands in spacious grounds. The total cost was more than two lakhs of rupees; but nobody had to be asked to subscribe, for the money was available from a peculiar source. It was an age in which State lotteries were in vogue; Madras had followed the fashion ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... they yet retain both mental and bodily vigour. As yet their children all remain at home, as the boys find ample employment upon the farm, and at the mill; While Jennette assists her mother in the labours of the household. For many years the setting sun has rested upon the gleaming spire of the neat and substantial church erected by the settlers; and now upon the Sabbath day, instead of listening to a sermon read by a neighbour, they listen to the regular preaching of the gospel, and each one according to his means contributes to the support of their minister. ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... at sunrise, and for a time we enjoyed the view of the spire of Antwerp Cathedral, wrought of Mechlin lace, as the ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... chiefly compose the woods, are the Canadian 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 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... from the church, With my Bible under my arm 'Till I was gray and old; Unwedded, alone in the world, Finding brothers and sisters in the congregation, And children in the church. I know they laughed and thought me queer. I knew of the eagle souls that flew high in the sunlight, Above the spire of the church, and laughed at the church, Disdaining me, not seeing me. But if the high air was sweet to them, sweet was the church to me. It was the vision, vision, vision of the ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... appear to resemble either Eden or the Boulevard Saint-Michel. At times I felt dull. I would lean over the parapet of the bridge at the other end of the High Street, and watch the tower and decorated spire of the old parish church rise from the gold and russet bosom of the church-yard elms, and wish I were back on the Pont Neuf with the tumultuous life of Paris around me. There was a lack of breeziness in ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... music in its breeze? Who hath not dreamed that even the skylark's throat Hails that sweet morning with a gentler note? Fair morn, how gaily shone thy dawning smile On the green valleys of my native isle! How gladly many a spire's resounding height With peals of transport hailed thy newborn light! Ah! little thought the peasant then, who blest The peaceful hour of consecrated rest, And heard the rustic Temple's arch prolong The simple cadence of the hallowed song, That the same sun illumed a gory ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... warm glow at the heart, the realisation was brought to him. This was home, and over yonder, under the shadow of the heaven-pointing spire, a slip of a girl was waiting ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... on her head for head-dress, was passing like a block of shadow through the glistening, green corn, into the full glare. There was a farm, too, pale blue in shadow, and the timber black. And there was a church spire, nearly fused away in the gold. The woman moved on, away from him. He had no language with which to speak to her. She was the bright, solid unreality. She would make a noise of words that would confuse him, and her eyes ...
— The Prussian Officer • D. H. Lawrence
... astonishing fan, and at once became absorbed in examining it. Of course, there was no perspective whatever, which only gave it a peculiar charm to Rose, for in one place a lovely lady, with blue knitting-needles in her hair, sat directly upon the spire of a stately pagoda. In another charming view a brook appeared to flow in at the front door of a stout gentleman's house, and out at his chimney. In a third a zig-zag wall went up into the sky like a flash of lightning, ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... 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 keeping with one another. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... on a bow so small, The rook could build her nest no higher; They fix'd me on the trembling ball That crowns the steeple's quiv'ring spire; They set me where the seas retire, But drown with their returning tide; And made me flee the mountain's fire, When rolling ...
— Miscellaneous Poems • George Crabbe
... p. 494.), which is referred to by your correspondent, is the first instance, I believe, of the application of a new material to the construction of an ecclesiastical edifice. It is built throughout, walls, tower, and spire, benches and fittings, of terra cotta from the Ladyshore works. The architect is that accomplished antiquary, Mr. Sharpe of Lancaster, who furnished the designs of every part, from which moulds were made, and in these the composition forming the terra cotta was prepared, and hardened by the application ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 63, January 11, 1851 • Various
... "But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name." He says: "My whole former life came before my eyes just as one sees a whole city from a lofty spire. At first it seemed as if I could number all my sins; but soon there opened the great fountain of them—my own blind unbelief, which had so long deceived me; I was terrified with my lost condition, and wondered if God were merciful enough to bless me. ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... concentrating them in admiration upon the scene. There was the Sphinx welcoming us with an immense smile of benevolence, as suitable to the sunshine as had been her mysterious solemnity to the moonlight. There, far away to the left, the spire-crowned Citadel floated in translucent azure. Its domes and minarets, and the long serrated line of the Mokattam Hills were carved against the sky in the yellow-rose of pink topaz. Shafts of light gave to ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... enjoy it excessively. Besides, the shower is just over.—What church is that, Monsieur, with the very disproportionate steeple?" inquired Miselle, pointing to a square gray box, surmounted by a ludicrously short and obtuse spire, expressive of a certain dogged obstinacy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... that its battlements might be somewhat evened with those of the hill-wall above. So that as they came up to the place they saw little of the town because of the enormity of the wall; scarce aught save a spire or a tall towering roof ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... same seal. A church, with central spire, a cross at each gable end, masoned walls imitating ashlar-work, and traceried windows, standing on a ship with a castle at each end, that on the left pointed, that on the right ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... old timbered houses on the right of the footpath opposite the old boundary-post), and then turn to the right by the church, rebuilt in the 17th century on the site of an older and finer one, whose spire was at one time ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... on the water-side, is the Viceroy's palace; that to the right, again, is the convent of the barefooted Carmelites: yon lofty spire is the cathedral of St Catherine, and that beautiful and light piece of architecture is the church of our Lady of Pity. You observe there a building, with a dome, rising behind the ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... central tower had been erected as part of the original plan, and also that a new upper part was being added to this same tower about the middle of the thirteenth century. This new portion eventually rose above the roofs to the level of the top of the square parapet, about the base of the octagonal spire, the spire being a still later addition. Now the heightening of this tower—perhaps with already the idea of a future spire in view—would raise many questions. Experience would already have taught the builders ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette
... 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 ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... foreign-looking citizens—the full-fledged Rusk of the unmistakable type is hard to find nowadays,—and troops of Indians give a semblance of life to this quarter. At the head of the street stands the Russian Orthodox Church; and this edifice, with its quaint tower and spire, is really the lion of the place. St. Michael's was dedicated in 1844 by the Venerable Ivan Venianimoff, the metropolitan of Moscow, for years priest and Bishop ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... came, Those lightning births my nature seemed to share, They told the secrets of its fiery frame, The sudden messengers of hate and love, The thunderbolts that arm the hand of Jove, And strike sometimes the sacred spire, and strike the ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... Redeem'd from tapers and defrauded pies, Inspir'd he seizes: these an altar raise; An hecatomb of pure, unsully'd lays That altar crowns; a folio common-place Founds the whole pile, of all his works the base: Quartos, Octavos, shape the less'ning pyre, A twisted birth-day ode completes the spire. "Then he, great tamer of all human art! First in my care, and ever at my heart; Dulness! whose good old cause I yet defend, With whom my Muse began, with whom shall end, Ere since Sir Fopling's periwig was praise, To the last honours of the Butt ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... knoll. The quaint, undignified tartan of a myriad small fields dies out into the distance; the strips blend and disappear; and the dead flat lies forth open and empty, with no accident save perhaps a thin line of trees or faint church-spire against the sky. Solemn and vast at all times, in spite of pettiness in the near details, the impression becomes more solemn and vast towards evening. The sun goes down, a swollen orange, as it were into the sea. A blue-clad peasant rides home, with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... out of level plains. On the summit of Satrunjaya are innumerable shrines, arranged in marble courts or along well-paved streets. In each enclosure is a central temple surrounded by others at the sides, and all are dominated by one which in the proportions of its spire and courtyard surpasses the rest. Only a few Yatis are allowed to pass the night in the sacred precincts and it is a strange experience to enter the gates at dawn and wander through the interminable succession of white marble courts tenanted only by flocks of sacred pigeons. ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... ancient oaks and wide wild heaths, of historic houses, and dark woods, and green fields innumerable—a Wordsworthian shire, steeped in the deepest peace of England. As Orth drove towards his own gates he had the typical English sunset to gaze upon, a red streak with a church spire against it. His woods were silent. In the fields, the cows stood as if conscious of their part. The ivy on his old gray towers had been young with ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... gate-house into Mr. Smithson's Park, and Rood Hall lay on the low ground in front of them, with its back to the river. It was an old red brick house in the Tudor style, with an advanced porch, and four projecting wings, three stories high, with picturesque spire roofs overtopping the main building. Around the house ran a boldly-carved stone parapet, bearing the herons and bulrushes which were the cognisance of the noble race for which the mansion was built. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... we bluffed our past the guards at the gate of the fortress, and went forward under the faint glimmer of rare electric lights along the side of the church where lie the tombs of the Tsars, beneath the slender golden spire and the chimes, which, for months, continued to play Bozhe Tsaria Khrani [*] every day at [* "God Save the Tsar." noon.... The place was deserted; in most of the windows there were not even lights. Occasionally we bumped into a burly figure stumbling along in the dark, ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... embowered. The ancient cloisterhouse and church now reconverted to religious uses—was a plain, rather insipid structure of red brick picked out with white stone, presenting three symmetrical gables to the street, with a slender belfry and spire ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... as a brewery in Hotbath Meadows—and, possessed of the ecclesiastic idea, had given the Camel a transept; but, finding this impeded her passage through the water, he had it removed. This weakened the vessel amidships. The mainmast was something like a steeple. It had a weathercock. From this spire the eye commanded one of the finest views ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... come right along up," the landlady called down through the oval spire formed by the ascending ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... beautiful timber. There is a prairie lawn, spread like a carpet in patterns composed of pretty wild flowers. Upon it stand hundreds of cottage-built tenements, covered with the creeping vine. In the centre, the presidio, or government-house; on one side the graceful spire of a church, on the other the massive walls of a convent. Above all, is a sky of the deepest cobalt blue, richly contrasting with the dark green of the tall pines, and the uncertain and indescribable tints on the horizon of these ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... grew louder, coming their way. The tracks squeaked as the car turned around the rock spire, obviously seeking them out. A large carrier, big as a truck, it stopped before them in a cloud of its own dust and the ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... settlements look beautiful!" said Mrs. Jones. "See the little white church yonder with its tiny spire! It just seems to me as if I should like to stop and attend service in that pretty ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... From spire and barn, looked westerly The patient weathercocks; But even the birches on the hill 15 Stood motionless as rocks. No sound was in the woodlands Save the squirrel's dropping shell, And the yellow leaves among the boughs, Low ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... anxious. When we see persons in situations which strongly suggest the idea of danger to our minds, it makes us uneasy, though we may know that there is no actual danger in the case. Thus it is painful to most persons to see a carpenter upon a very lofty spire, or to go very near a precipice, or see any body else go, even when there is a strong railing; and so in all other cases. Therefore, our rule ought always to be, when we are in company with others, not only not to go into actual ...
— Rollo's Museum • Jacob Abbott
... stairs; but when they passed into the open air he felt he had lost her irrevocably. The river was now tinted with setting light, the balustrade of Waterloo Bridge showed like lace-work, the glass roofing of Charing Cross station was golden, and each spire distinct upon the moveless blue. The splashing of a steamer sounded strange upon his ears. The "Citizen" passed! She was crowded with human beings, all apparently alike. Then the eye separated them. An old lady making her way down ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... blue waters of Lake Lucerne mirrored the glowing colors of the mountain-peaks beyond its farther shore, and nearer, among the foothills of old Pilatus itself, a little village nestled among green trees, its roofs clustered about a white church-spire. Now the bells in the steeple began to ring, and the sound floated out across the green fields spangled with yellow daffodils, and reached Mother Adolf where she stood. Bells from more distant villages soon joined in the clamor, until all the air was filled with music and a hundred ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... 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 ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... red Spanish gold, Rank scurvy knaves, ripe fruit for gallows-tree; Or else the sexton's son"—here Wyndham laughed, Though not a man of mirth—indeed, a man Of niggard humor; but that sexton's son— Lean as the shadow cast by a church spire, Eyes deep in the sockets, noseless, high cheek-boned, Like nothing in the circle of this earth But a death's-head that from a mural slab Within the chancel leers through sermon-time, Making a mock of poor mortality. ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... loggias. But whichever way they turned dusty roads too confronted them, illimitable stretches of gloomy suburb, unwholesome airs, sickening sights and sounds and perfumes. Narrow streets swept, darkling, under pointed archways, that framed distant vistas of spire or campanile, silhouetted against the solid blue sky of Italy. The crystal hardness of that sapphire firmament repelled Herminia. They passed beneath the triumphal arch of Augustus with its Etruscan mason-work, its Roman decorations, and round the antique walls, aglow with tufted gillyflowers, ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... in the Bishop's garden, who held themselves up proudly on the borders of the terraces, going slowly, as if walking merely to show themselves off. Sometimes, half lost in the blue sky, looking scarcely larger than a fly, a crow alighted on the point of a spire to smooth its wings. The old stones themselves were animated by the quiet working of the roots of a whole flora of plants, the lichens and the grasses, which pushed themselves through the openings in the walls. On very stormy days the entire apse seemed to awake and to grumble ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... too and pleasant ones. From the south window, straight down the street, the houses and trees and the brown spire of the Methodist church stretched away—roofs and gable ends and the enormous tufty heads of the elm trees that half hung over them. At the back of these houses, the eye went uninterruptedly over meadows and ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... "Sp-sp-spire ob—ob mortification! Shamed ob dese hyer hosses! Frettin' cause yo's gotter 'scort a pair of animals what's got pedigrees dat reach back ter Noah's Ark eanemost! Why, dey blood kin make you-all's look lak mullen sap, an' dey manners, even if dey ain' nothin' but hosses, jist natchelly mak' yo' ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... despoiled of their rich harvest, yet still presenting a yellow surface to the eye; and ever and anon some bright patch of green, demanding the gaze as if by a lingering spell from the past spring; while, here and there, spire and hamlet studded the landscape, or some lowly cot lay, backed by the rising ground or the silent woods, white and solitary, and sending up its faint tribute of smoke in spires to the altars of Heaven. ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ample justice to her Splendid Pies! I attended high mass in the great Cathedral of Strasbourg, and was surprised and pleased at the sight of 10,000 soldiers, in review order, drawn up within its walls. It was tiresome enough work mounting to the top of the spire, (which I ascertained, by the steps I took, to be exactly 490 feet high, Strasbourg measure; and this is exactly eight feet higher than St. Peter's at Rome), but I made it out, notwithstanding the sulky looks of the jackanapes ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 345, December 6, 1828 • Various
... Mrs. John Shadrack had been entertaining me, or I had been entertaining her, I had not the remotest idea. A very long while ago I had seen a spire of smoke curling through the trees in Happy Valley, and I had been told that it was from her hearth. Then we had gone plunging madly down the hill to it, Tip, the gray colt and I. We had turned a sharp bend, we had heard the swish of a mountain-stream. ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... a time, leaning, sick and faint from the violence that had been used to him, against the back wall of the house. The wall looked on a court where a well was, and the backs of other houses, and beyond them the spire of the Muntze Tower and the ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... century, Alexander I. rebuilt this stately and graceful edifice, after the plans of the Russian architect Zakharoff, who created the beautiful tower adorned with Russian sculptures, crowned by a golden spire, in the centre of the immense facade, fourteen hundred feet long, which forms a feature inseparable from the vista of the Prospekt for the greater part of its length, to the turn at the Znamenskaya Square. On this spire, at the present day, flags and lanterns warn the inhabitants ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... This no one would attempt to deny; but, in another environment, how different might it not appear,—as for instance placed beside Amiens, where in one particular alone, the mere height of nave and choir, it immediately dwindles into insignificance. Under such conditions its graceful spire becomes dwarfed and attenuated. Need more be said?—The writer thinks not, since the present work does not deal with the comparative merits of any two cathedrals or of national types; but the suggestion should serve to demonstrate ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... right half,—with two St. Luke's crosses in its lower panels, and two diamond-shaped "lights" above. Hereabout the street widens into what seems a common; and not far below, sitting squarely and authoritatively in the middle of the common, is the red-roofed meeting-house, with tall spire, and in its shadow the humble belfry of the town academy. Opposite these there comes into the main street a highway from the east; and upon one of the corners thus formed stands the Eagle Tavern, its sign creaking appetizingly on a branch of an overhanging ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... fields before me which we had yet to cross, with the Dieben winding through them under his low, red-brick bridges, and beyond the little clustered village with its grey church spire standing ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... a big, bulky bundle in his arms, slipped out of the crooked, shadow-filled street beside the old church of San Miguel. He halted a moment before the structure and looked up at the ancient crude spire outlined against the sky, then sped down the narrow way by the hotel at the end of the trail. He crossed the Plaza swiftly and dashed out beyond the Palace of the Governors and ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... fondness which were shed on him as he lay on his mother's knee. It was twilight as he entered the village of Callam, and, asking a homeward-bound labourer the way to Daniel Knott's, learned that it was by the church, which showed its stumpy ivy-clad spire on a slight elevation of ground; a useful addition to the means of identifying that desirable homestead afforded by Daniel's description—'the prittiest place iver you see'—though a small cow-yard full of excellent manure, and leading right up to the door, without any frivolous interruption ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... 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 ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... LEGEND. Prologue: The Spire of Strasburg Cathedral I. The Castle of Vautsberg on the Rhine Courtyard of the Castle II. A Farm in the Odenwald A Room in the Farmhouse Elsie's Chamber The Chamber of Gottlieb and Ursula A Village Church A Room ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... of the most delightful afternoons I have ever spent," Douglas remarked. "What a beautiful place you have here, with the river right near, and the spire of the church showing above the tree tops. I wish I were an artist. By the way, I was around the church this morning, and everything shows signs of neglect. It struck me as ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... rather dreaded than sought for the first view of that well-known spire which would announce her within twenty miles of home. Salisbury she had known to be her point on leaving Northanger; but after the first stage she had been indebted to the post-masters for the names of the places which were then to conduct her to it; so great had been her ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... four cents made a difference to her. She would have enjoyed the brilliant scene which Broadway always presents, with its gay shop-windows and hurrying multitudes, if her mind had not been preoccupied. At length Trinity spire came in sight. When they reached the great church which forms so prominent a landmark in the lower part of Broadway, she got out, and ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... making it very like, only the spire is too slender, and that tree—can't you alter the ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... horizon, and the sun shone through it with red rayless countenance. But before we reached the church, which was some three miles from home, the fog was gone, and the frost had taken shelter with the shadows; the sun was dazzling without being clear, and the golden cock on the spire was glittering keen ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... good old town," he broke off with boyish enthusiasm. "Look, there is the creek, and the old swimming-hole at the bend. I'll bet I've been in there a thousand times. And see that spire—that's our church. Our ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... arrived at St. Petersburg. The long northern twilight had begun, and the last glow of the western sky was reflected on the golden dome of St. Isaac's, while the arrowy spire of the Admiralty shot up ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... she will, Mrs. Dr. dear," said Susan, after Miss Cornelia had gone. "She would stick at nothing, not even at shingling the church spire if she took it into her head. But I cannot understand how even Cornelia Bryant can talk to a minister as she does. You would think he was ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... me speaks as the roll of thunder that cannot be denied—you must hear it; and how can you shut your ears to what this lark sings, this violet tells, this little grey shell writes in the curl of its spire? The bitter truth that human life is no more to the universe than that of the unnoticed hill-snail in the grass should make us think more and more highly of ourselves as human—as men—living things that think. We must look to ourselves to help ourselves. ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... And in half a twinkling he had picked me out a paper from his bundle. When I explained to him, he good-naturedly tucked the paper in again, piloted me across, unravelled the end of Washington Street for me, and with much pointing out of landmarks, headed me for my destination, my nose seeking the spire of the ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... no church at all, With stained cathedral glass, With lofty spire and arching hall, And terraced lawns of grass: No organ peals, no chanting choir, No frescoed walls that men admire Had this old meeting-house; But roses wild their petals piled About its sacred door, And locust bloom shed rich perfume, Upon the ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... sovereign, Reason. The true words and deeds of successive generations will build up this glorified humanity, fairer than any Parian marble, grander than any colossal sculpture of the East, more exalted than spire or dome, boundless in capacity, in aspiration, limitless ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... thus towers above us, and gleams like the shining cross on the top of some lofty cathedral spire, does not flash up there inaccessible, nor lie before us like some pathless precipice, up which nothing that has not wings can ever hope to rise, but the height of the love of Christ is an hospitable height, which can be scaled by us. Nay, rather, that heaven of love which is 'higher ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... shops. Into the cloudless blue sky rose the pinnacles of Santa Croce, the domes of San Spirito, of the Baptistery, of the Cathedral; sharply defined in the clear atmosphere were the airy, light Campanile of Giotto, the more slender brown tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, the spire of Santa Maria Novella. Northward beyond the city rose the heights of Fiesole, and to the east the green hills dotted all over with white houses, swept away into ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... and would eke out the angular emptiness of the subject by a varied group of expectant pioneers big in the foreground. He had also taken the Baptist church, of whose Bible-class Andrew P. Hill had been a member. He would suppress the spire, and would show the pillared front on some Sunday morning in midsummer, with an abundance of wide petticoats and deep bonnets of the period of 1845, or thereabouts, displayed upon its front steps. And finally, as he was fairly strong on figures in action, he had intrepidly undertaken the Pottawatomie ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... sand-bags in the enemy's line, to the blasted tree sliced by shell-fire, the upturned railway—truck of which only the metal remained, the distant fringe of trees like gallows on the sky-line, the broken spire of a church which could be seen in the round O of the telescope when the weather was not too misty. In "quiet" sections of the line the only variation to the routine was the number of casualties day by day, by casual shell-fire or snipers' bullets, and that became part of ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... 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
... town on parallel streets rise tiers of white stone houses, relieved by spire and tower. On neighboring highest hills are old castles, forts, ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... For a girl of twenty-three to taunt a middle-aged architect, whom she knew to be constitutionally liable to giddiness, never to let him have any peace till he had climbed a spire as dizzy as himself—and all for the fun of seeing him fall ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 11, 1893 • Various
... copper flashed far across the deep. The high street winds from the cathedral precinct past an old house of Queen Mary Stuart, past ruined chapels of St. Leonard's, and the university chapel with its lovely spire, down to the shores of the bay; and along the bay run the famous "links," where the royal and ancient game has its cradle and home. Other links, as Prestwick, or North Berwick, may vie with those of St. Andrews in extent, or in the smoothness of the putting greens, or in the number and hardness ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... that was the cause of so much sorrow could never be found, and the Indians believe that it was taken away by the spirits of Kos-su'-kah and Tee-hee'-nay. In memory of them, and of this tragedy, the slender spire of rock [sometimes called "The Devil's Thumb"] that rises heavenward near the top of the cliff at this point is known among the Indians as ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... 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
... sit on hills our childhood wist, Woods, hamlets, streams, beholding! The sun strikes, through the furthest mist, The city's spire to golden. The city's golden spire it was, When hope and health were strongest, But now it is the churchyard grass We look upon the longest. Be pitiful, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... then she passed groups of people homeward bound, or English soldiers sauntering along the street, and then turning a corner she gave a little exclamation of delight, for there, close at hand, were the brick walls of Christ Church, its graceful spire rising against the clear April sky. And now home was near at hand and Betty quickened her pace. She had almost forgotten her mother's ruined bonnet and the fact that she had no excuse to give for borrowing the things for Gilbert's play without permission. All she could think of was the fact that ...
— A Little Maid of Old Philadelphia • Alice Turner Curtis
... gently from the rich, level pastures of the Vale of Pickering, the town has a picturesque and pleasant site. At the top of the market-place where the ground becomes much steeper stands the church, its grey bulk dominating every view. From all over the Vale one can see the tall spire, and from due east or west it has a surprising way of peeping over the hill tops. It has even been suggested that the tower and spire have been a landmark for a very long time, owing to the fact that where the hills ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... marvellous and shining, A hundred steeples on the sky out-lining, Like network threads of fire; Above them all, with halo far outspreading, I saw a golden cross in glory heading A consecrated spire: ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... judgment on their father!—then The spire of Holy Church may prick the graves— Her crypt among the stars. Sign? seal? I promised The King to obey these customs, not yet written, Saving mine order; true too, that when written I sign'd them—being a fool, as Foliot call'd me. I hold not by my signing. Get ye hence, Tell ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... 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 paces from ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the great cord, renowned of old, Which Varun ever loves to hold. Take these two thunderbolts, which I Have got for thee, the Moist and Dry. Here Siva's dart to thee I yield, And that which Vishnu wont to wield. I give to thee the arm of Fire, Desired by all and named the Spire. To thee I grant the Wind-God's dart, Named Crusher, O thou pure of heart, This arm, the Horse's Head, accept, And this, the Curlew's Bill yclept, And these two spears, the best e'er flew, Named the Invincible and True. And arms of fiends I make thine ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... term. The swelling summit of Mount Pequakett rises at the north-east of the village, a lone sentinel, guarding the gateway of the mountains with bold and unchanging brow. On the western side extends a long range of rocky hills, with the single spire-like summit of Chocorua far beyond, piercing the blue vault ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... to think of the church as I propose it shall be when finished according to the plans I have made," he said hoarsely. "I am going to think of it with a belfry spire roofed with red tiles and a clock in the tower, and I am going to think of the clock as pointing to the exact hour of noon. Do you all understand? It is impossible that this man should know of how I mean to build that spire and about the clock, because ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... atmosphere. As daylight widens, successive groups of mottled and rosy-bosomed clouds assemble on the gilded sphere, and, crowned with wreaths of fickle rainbows, spread a mirrored flush over hill, grove, and lake, and every village spire is burnished with ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... secured some protection against a lawless foe. The road rose and fell in a straight line across the table-land without tree or hedge, and Madrid seemed to belong to another world, for the horizon, which was distant enough, bore no sign of cathedral spire or ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... one entirely of timber, with the frame for the bells springing from the ground, at Pembridge, Herefordshire. At Salisbury a fine early English detached campanile, 200 feet in height, surmounted by a timber turret and spire, stood near the north-west corner of the cathedral, but was ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various
... inventor of the salts which still bear his name, and who practised as a physician at Amsterdam about the middle of the seventeenth century, established a public school in that city for the study of alchymy, and gave lectures himself upon the science. John Joachim Becher, of Spire, acquired great reputation at the same period; and was convinced that much gold might be made out of flint stones by a peculiar process, and the aid of that grand and incomprehensible substance, the philosopher's stone. He made ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... or remarkable. It was at Wellington College that he was born, in the Master's Lodge, in a sunny bedroom, in the south-east corner of the house; one of its windows looking to the south front of the college and the chapel with its slender spire; the other window looking over the garden and a waste of heather beyond, to the fir-crowned hill of Ambarrow. My father had been Headmaster for twelve years and was nearing the end of his time there; and ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Citadel, and Christ Church spire. But I must rest. I'll enter yonder inn." She stepped forward toward a shabby looking tavern a few doors off, where a crowd of garrulous soldiers were grouped about the door. Too weary to observe any one, Leah staggered into the forlorn, miserably furnished ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... stood Eight daughters of the plow, stronger than men, Huge women blowzed with health, and wind, and rain, And labor. Each was like a Druid rock, Or like a spire of land that stands apart Cleft from the main and wall'd ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... fairyland—the silver flood of the harbor motionless as glass, the wooded meadows dank with bloom, the air odorous of woodland smells, the blue hills rimming round the sky, and against the woods of the north shore the chapel spire and thatch roofs and slab walls of the little fort, the one oasis of life in a wilderness. {38} As the sails rattled down and the anchor dropped, not a soul appeared from the fort. The gates were bolted fast. The Jonas runs up the French ensign. Then a canoe shoots ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... ourselves within the compass of the life-mystery, we cannot hold it at arm's length from us and look at its lines of configuration. Nor of a life can we in any measure determine the success by what we behold of it. It is to us at best but a truncated spire, whose want of completion may be the greater because of the breadth of its base, and its slow taper, indicating the lofty height to which it is intended to aspire. The idea of our own life is more than we can embrace. It is not ours, but God's, ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... notched trees to guide, it is not to be wondered that she wandered long and wearily to very little purpose. Tall trees seemed to encompass her on every side, or where the view was more open, she beheld the distant blue hills rising one behind another; but no village spire or cottage chimney was there to cheer her on her way, and fatigued with the search, and despairing of finding the cattle, she resolved while it was yet light, to ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... street of the pleasant village of Delafield Savory Gray, Esq., hired a large house, with an avenue of young lindens in front, a garden on one side, and a spacious play-ground in the rear. The pretty pond was not far away, with its sloping shores and neat villas, and a distant spire upon the opposite bank—the whole like the vignette of an English pastoral poem. Here the merchant turned from importing pongees to inculcating principles. His old friends sent some of their children to the new school, and persuaded their friends to send others. Some of his former correspondents ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... climbing plants, and studied the whole subject. I was all the more attracted to it, from not being at all satisfied with the explanation which Henslow gave us in his lectures, about twining plants, namely, that they had a natural tendency to grow up in a spire. This explanation proved quite erroneous. Some of the adaptations displayed by Climbing Plants are as beautiful as those of Orchids for ensuring ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... who first recovered herself. She put out a kindly hand to Helene, who stood wet-eyed and drooping by the window, looking out upon the roofs of Thorn, though well I wot she saw nothing of spire, ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... roof by Abbot Islip, who witnessed the erection of Henry VII.'s Chapel. Two hundred and thirty years afterwards Sir Christopher Wren restored Islip's work, and designed the upper portions. The edifice is not yet complete, as the square central tower requires a lofty spire to ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... a high-heaped assemblage of red-tiled roofs, and above them rose the fretwork of a soaring Gothic spire. A narrow river half encircled the town, and a battered old bridge, guarded by a round-towered gateway, led out into the open country towards a horizon bounded by a low range of blue hills. Trumpet-calls ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... the child He softened his rough speech to soothings mild; For him he smiled, with him each day he walked Through the dark gloomy streets; to him he talked Of home, of England, and strange stories told Of English heroes in the days of old; And, (when the sunset gilded roof and spire,) The marvellous tale which never seemed to tire: How the gilt dragon, glaring fiercely down From the great belfry, watching all the town, Was brought, a trophy of the wars divine, By a Crusader from far Palestine, And given to Bruges; and how Ghent arose, And how they struggled long ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... little time for historic memories; they will jostle us in the market-place, and in the principal streets they will be seen rushing about as if 'on change,' or hurrying to 'catch the train for Paris,' like the rest of the world. A few only have eyes of love and admiration for the noble spire of the church of St. Pierre, which rises above the old houses and the market-place, with even a grander effect than any that the artist has been able to render in the illustration. 'St. Pierre, St. Pierre,' are the first and last words we heard of Caen; the first time, ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... Alp; uplands, highlands; heights &c (summit) 210; knob, loma^, pena [U.S.], picacho^, tump^; knoll, hummock, hillock, barrow, mound, mole; steeps, bluff, cliff, craig^, tor^, peak, pike, clough^; escarpment, edge, ledge, brae; dizzy height. tower, pillar, column, obelisk, monument, steeple, spire, minaret, campanile, turret, dome, cupola; skyscraper. pole, pikestaff, maypole, flagstaff; top mast, topgallant mast. ceiling &c (covering) 223. high water; high tide, flood tide, spring tide. altimetry &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... blindfold from the king's three daughters by touching their hands; and here, too, we must suppose previous help or concert, though it has disappeared from the text. In a story from Lorraine, John has to take the devil's daughter, Greenfeather, to pieces to find a spire for the top of a castle that he is compelled to build; and in putting her together again he sets one of her little fingers clumsily. With bandaged eyes he has to find the lady who has assisted him; ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... wind took by the tail St. Peter's cock on the church spire and whirled it about, so did the wind of words in Glaston rudely seize and flack hither and thither the spiritual reputation of Thomas Wingfold, curate. And all the time, the young man was wrestling, his life in his hand, with his ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... took a careful look in every direction. It was level, open country all about them, dotted here and there with farmhouses, and in the distance the spire of a village church rose above the clustering houses and pointed to ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... try to get the Atom Smasher," said Jim, pointing to the thin spire of violet flame that was still visible in the center of the causeway. "It's our only chance. You must stay here. If I live, I'll return. If ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... 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 ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... with every kind of modern utensil for a house. Such a mixture! They are all heavily protected against the sun by awnings, for even at this early hour of the morning it is strong. At the end of the street is a tall red sandstone tower with a clock in it. In the distance we see the spire of an English church, and down that opening we catch sight of a Mohammedan mosque. The shop here beside us is a blaze of colour with Eastern carpets hung out like banners; the native owner squats on a thing like a wooden bedstead by his door and chews betel-nut, which makes his tongue ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... prominent buildings mounting higher and higher year by year along the city horizon, marking the course of Broadway from the Battery, literally fulfilling the humor of Knickerbocker in not leaving space for a breath of air for the top of old Trinity Church spire. ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... with variegated marble, and ornamented with statues; 3. the lofty and richly-embellished Tower of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, forming the most striking object from whichever side we view the city. The interior is enriched with valuable paintings by Flemish masters; the height of the spire is stated ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... that shows no sign of human habitation, that knows no village, nor any distant spire? The crops are like ours at home—wheat, lucerne, and the flowering bean that perfumes the air with its white blossoms. But there is an excess of light in the sky and, in the distance, an extraordinary ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... upon the guilty battle-ground as she had done before, when it was innocent. The larks sang high above it; the swallows skimmed and dipped and flitted to and fro; the shadows of the flying clouds pursued each other swiftly, over grass and corn and turnip-field and wood, and over roof and church- spire in the nestling town among the trees, away into the bright distance on the borders of the sky and earth, where the red sunsets faded. Crops were sown, and grew up, and were gathered in; the stream that had been crimsoned, turned a watermill; men whistled ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... church, with a queer pointed spire and a beautiful altar, stands with open doors like a kindly welcome to all. Back of this, and apologetically placed behind its stockade fence, is ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... 1830, the two fishermen engaged a caleche, and a boy named Louis Panet drove them up the Murray River. The present village church was already standing, "a respectable church," says Dr. Henry, "with its long roof and glittering spire and a tall elm or two"; the elms, alas, have disappeared and now there are only willows. A wooden bridge crossed the Murray and its large abutments loaded with great boulders told of formidable spring floods ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... harmony. There were the sinuous buttes that bordered the opposite shore of the river—solemn sentinels guarding the beauty and purity of this virgin land. Near her were sloping hills, dotted with thorny cactus and other prickly plants, and now rose a bald rock spire with its suggestion of grim lonesomeness. In the southern and eastern distances were the plains, silent, vast, unending. It seemed she had come to dwell in a land deserted by some cyclopean race. Its magnificent, unchanging ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... onward, and all persons closed their doors, and said that Christmas would be cold. In a quarter of an hour they saw their chronology late by a day. In half an hour they noted a gray mist drive across the sky. There was a faint wavering and spreading and deflection at the top of the tallest spire of smoke. Somewhere, high above, there passed a swarm ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... listening to his intelligent remarks on men and things; and though seventy-eight years of age, every faculty of head and heart seemed to keep pace with the times. He was a Wesleyan Methodist, and with pleasure told us of the erection of their new Zion, whose glistening tinned spire we could see rising among the woods at no ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... Scotchman, a man of education obviously, and a man of some property, since he lived in idleness. He had come to Debenham years ago, while still young, and by a mere continuance of living had grown to be an adopted townsman. His blue camlet cloak was a local antiquity, like the church-spire. His place in the parlour at the George, his absence from church, his old, crapulous, disreputable vices, were all things of course in Debenham. He had some vague Radical opinions and some fleeting infidelities, which he would now and again set forth ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... residence in the interior ... are founded on no higher authority than an interpolation by a missionary translator into the Chinese text of the treaty between France and China." That "the disturbance of a local fengshui by a church spire is considered as much of a grievance as the erection of a hideous tannery beside ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... The graceful spire rose before them, guiding them all the way, which did not seem long to Olive, who revelled in the beauties unfolded along their lonely walk—a winding road, bounding the forest, on whose verge the hill stood. But Christal's Parisian feet soon grew wearied, and when they ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... during service some pieces of stone from the spire of St. Mary's fell on the roof of the church. The congregation, thinking that the steeple was coming down, in their alarm broke through the windows. Johnson, we may well believe, witnessed the scene. The church was pulled ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... you are idiots, acknowledge that you said to yourselves: "I am in the right. Here, and here alone, lies man's part. I am entering on a path, beaten and worn, but straight; I shall cross the weary downs, but each step will bring me nearer the village spire. I am not wandering through life, I am marching on, I stir with my feet the dust in which my father has planted his. My child, on the same road, will find the traces of my footsteps, and, perhaps, on seeing that I have not faltered, will ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... almost surrounded by the drooping leaves of a weeping- ash—a seat on the long broad terrace walk on the other side of the wood, that overlooked the pleasant slope of the meadows beyond; the walk had probably been made to command this sunny, peaceful landscape, with trees, and a church spire, two or three red-tiled roofs of old cottages, and a purple bit of rising ground in the distance; and at some previous date, when there might have been a large family of Hamleys residing at the hall, ladies in hoops, and gentlemen in bag- ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... that surround Bowood, the mansion of the Marquis of Lansdowne, neighbor the poet's humble dwelling. The spire of the village church, beside the portals of which the poet now sleeps, is seen above adjacent trees. Laborers' cottages are scattered all about. They are a heavy and unimaginative race, those peasants of Wiltshire; and, knowing their neighbor had written books, they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various |
