"Firmament" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... crowns lost in shadow. He could have fancied himself in a hothouse roofed with black glass, for there were flagstones under foot, and no sky could be seen, no breeze could stir overhead. The few stars whose glimmer twinkled from afar belonged to our firmament; they quivered almost on the ground, and were, in ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... wild shrieking! Night—closed, on a Union rent! And still the lawyer sat dreaming Of its once bright firmament. ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... much of the evil life lived in our Russian monasteries and convents, and the warm welcome given to every charlatan who grows his beard, forgets to wash, lifts his eyes heavenwards, and begs, I had, I confess at the outset, but little faith in this new star in Holy Russia's firmament now introduced to me by His Excellency ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... set out for their march, oh, how the trumpets sounded, their armour glittered, and how the colours waved in the wind! The Prince's armour was all of gold, and it shone like the sun in the firmament; the captains' armour was of proof, and was in appearance like the glittering stars. There were also some from the court that rode reformades for the love that they had to the King Shaddai, and for the happy deliverance of the ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... "Thy wondrous song in melting strains To our mute hearts swift entrance gains; By magical yet unfelt force, We see creation's mighty course: The firmament appears in space— God breathes upon the water's face. One flashing word bids primal light appear, Revolving stars begin their vast career; Upheaving mountains now are seen, Tall trees and tender herbage green; Young animals to being rise, And animate ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... zenith. The woods and the fields roundabout lay clearly visible; and, beyond the inundation of light which filled them, the view plunged into the limitless horizon. Then Peter cast his eyes upon the firmament, filled at that hour with myriads of stars. 'All that is mine,' he thought. 'All that is in me, is me! And that is what they think they have taken prisoner! That is what they have shut up in a cabin!' So he smiled, and turned in to sleep among ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... God found in the hollow of His hand This ball of Earth among His other balls, And set it in His shining firmament, Between the greater and the lesser lights, He chose it for the ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Enchanted Garden, and fell flat upon the ground, "when his eyes were so fast locked up by magic art, and his waking senses drowned in such a dead slumber, that it was as impossible to recover himself from sleep as to pull the sun out of the firmament." ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... but this broad earth stood deep and dim, idle 105 and useless, alien even to God himself; on it the King whose purpose never falters turned his eyes and beheld the place void of joy; he saw dark clouds, black under the firmament, throng in the eternal night, dun and 110 waste, until this world-creation came to pass through the word of the King of Glory. First the everlasting Lord, protector of all things, created heaven and earth; as the almighty King put forth the ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous
... good telescope, reminding one of the ripple-marks left by the tide on a soft sandy beach. Like most other objects of their class, they are very evanescent, gradually disappearing as the sun rises higher in the lunar firmament, and ultimately leaving nothing to indicate their presence beyond here and there a ghostly streak or vein of a somewhat lighter hue than that of the neighbouring surface. The Mare Nectaris, again, in the south-western quadrant, presents some fine examples ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... mother's words as she held the fluttering thrushes to her lips and kissed their downy breasts. Then had come the unlooked-for interruption. Polly's life seemed cloudless, and all of a sudden there appeared a speck in the firmament—a little cloud which grew rapidly, until the whole heavens were covered with it. Mother had gone away for ever, and there were now nine children in the ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... hazard resting! An unaimed bullet—a stop in the heart's pulsation—and the star we followed has gone out, God knows whither. The hope of fifteen thousand men lies broken and sightless, dead of purpose, far from home. They assure us that nothing in this world perishes, nor in the firmament above it: but we look up at the black space where a star has been quenched and know that something has failed us which ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... ignorant and coarse amongst the priests spoiled everything. The Blessed Sacrament was exposed for a whole week in the churches, and it ended by an announcement to Israel, that their cry had reached the firmament, that David had grown cold to Bathsheba (they did not add, nevertheless, that David preferred another to Bathsheba with his whole heart). But the Duchesse de Fontanges gave offence neither to the Archbishop of Paris nor to the Jesuits. Her mind ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... believe we may answer fearlessly—If you cannot see it, we cannot help you. If the heavens do not declare to you the glory of God, nor the firmament show you His handy-work, then our poor arguments will not show them. "The eye can only see that which it brings with it the power of seeing." We can only reassert that we see design everywhere; and that the vast majority of the human ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... the glory of heaven, because true faith she had 345 In the Almighty ever; now at last she doubted not Of the meed which long she yearned for. For that to the dear Lord be Glory for ever and ever, who made both wind and air, The heavens and roomy lands, likewise the rushing streams, And joys of firmament too by means of his mercy ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... the other indefinite; we look up to the dome of heaven and calmly acquiesce in the abstract idea of infinity; but we only realize the impossibility of conceiving it by the flight of imagination from star to star, from firmament to firmament. Even so Lombard Architecture attained perfection, expressed its idea, accomplished its purpose—but Gothic never; the Ideal is ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... that they all set out upon their voyage, and a beautiful sight it was to look upon. Their snow-white sails upon the deep sea shone like stars upon the blue of the firmament; and now they all followed close upon the leader's ship, and their little boats danced lightly and joyfully over the trackless waves, which lifted up their breasts to waft them over: and so they started. But I looked again in a little while, and ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce
... and rejoicing like a strong man to run a race. The red clouds with yellow edges dissolve in hazy dimness; the islands, with grayish-white ruffs of mist about them, cast ill-defined shadows on the glistening waters, and the whole down-bending firmament becomes pearl-gray. For three or four hours after sunrise there is nothing especially impressive in the landscape. The sun, though seemingly unclouded, may almost be looked in the face, and the islands and mountains, with ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... contributions—many of them elaborate treatises—numbered sixty-nine, forming a series of extraordinary importance to the history of astronomy. As a mere explorer of the heavens his labours were prodigious. He discovered 2,500 nebulae, 806 double stars, passed the whole firmament in review four several times, counted the stars in 3,400 "gauge-fields," and executed a photometric classification of the principal stars, founded on an elaborate (and the first systematically conducted) ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... produced many remarkable women; perhaps no other country can boast such an array of illustrious names; they shine from the pages of French history like fixed stars from the firmament. Among them, down the long vista of a hundred years, brilliant and beautiful, shines the name of Madame Roland, the spirit of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... land-labourer, is the one living and memorable figure, and he, alas! cannot possibly be more near than a collateral. It was on August 12, 1678, that he heard Mr. John Welsh on the Craigdowhill, and "took the heavens, earth, and sun in the firmament that was shining on us, as also the ambassador who made the offer, and the clerk who raised the psalms, to witness that I did give myself away to the Lord in a personal and perpetual covenant never to be forgotten"; and already, in 1675, the birth of my direct ascendant ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... [i.e., Ra] himself, and therefore in his name which I bear, I can tread on all my enemies. O great Ra, who climbest the heavenly vaults and who sailest in thy boat across the firmament with undisputed authority, do thou save me from that austere god whose eyebrows are as menacing as the balance that weighs the deeds of men. Save me, I pray thee, from these guardians of the passages who will, if they-may, impede my progress. O Tmu, who livest in the august abode, god of ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... up and owns that she does see yonder star; and then off he starts and drivels on about that star for full five minutes, and says he will cease to write to her when that pale star has fallen from its place amid the firmament of heaven. ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... Italian Federation of Palermo; Permanent Inspector and Sovereign Delegate of the Grand Central Directory of Naples for Europe (Universal High-grade Masonry), and, according to his latest portrait, Member of the New Reformed Palladium. That such a luminary could withdraw from the firmament of the Fraternity and not take after him the third part of the stars of heaven, above all that the Italian Grand Master could have the effrontery to affirm that he had never heard of him and had only discovered ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... as among the parts of his creation. Taking the discourses of the Lord Jesus, as the little child took the stars, for "gimlet-holes in heaven to let the glory shine through," we find in the prodigal the largest of them all. It differs from other stars in the same firmament by its bulk and its brightness. Never man spake like this man; and nowhere else has even this man spoken more fully or more winsomely of man's need and God's mercy. Both the departure and the return—both the fall and the rising again, are depicted here. The lesson sweeps the whole horizon ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... the 1st June, which began by telling me it had been twice begun and twice flung into the basket, so great was his indisposition to write as the time for departure came; and which ended thus. "The fire-flies at night now, are miraculously splendid; making another firmament among the rocks on the seashore, and the vines inland. They get into the bedrooms, and fly about, all night, like beautiful little lamps.[105]. . . I have surrendered much I had fixed my heart upon, as you know, admitting you have had reason for not ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... PERPETUAL RECOGNITION OF THE LIVING CHRIST.—"Because I live, ye shall live also." There are many life-verses in this Gospel which shine like stars in the firmament of Scripture. Amongst them, in the first chapter, that, in the Word as manifested to men, was life; and in the fifth chapter, that, "as the Father had life in Himself He gave to the Son to have life also in Himself." The Father is the fountain of life. Eternal life is ever rising ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... and looked. In the clear, starlight night I could just discern the mighty outline of the mountains of Mur. Above them the firmament was suffused with a strange red glow. I formed my own conclusion at ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... government still subsisted. The political heaven, though shaken, was not yet wholly removed, while the Senate, Consuls and other official dignitaries continued to shine as political luminaries in the firmament of power. But as the last of the Caesars fell from power in the year 476, so the last vestige of imperial dominion in the west was removed in 566, when Rome, the queen of the nations, was by the emperor of the east reduced to the humble ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... away, even the high gods themselves. The war trumpet sounded; riding upon the rainbow, came the gods, clad in steel, to fight their last battle on the last battle-field. Before them flew the winged vampires, and the dead warriors closed up the train. The whole firmament was ablaze with the northern lights, and yet the darkness triumphed. It was a terrible hour. And, close to the terrified woman, Helga seemed to be seated on the floor, in the hideous form of a frog, yet trembling, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... struck our hero as being most remarkable was the magnitude and dazzling brightness of the host of stars that covered the black firmament. It seemed as if they were magnified in glory, and twinkled so much that the sky seemed, as it were, to tremble with light. A feeling of deep solemnity filled Fred's heart as he gazed upwards; and ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... born, Ganesa, the elephant-headed god of wisdom, and Indra, the god of the firmament, both chiefs of inferior divinities, the number of which, if all the objects of adoration of the Hindus be included, ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... surrounding objects, and, if possible, rendering my heart more sensitive than ever. One solitary glimmering star showed by its paly quiverings the impress of evening, while not a cloud obscured the vast firmament of heaven. On such an evening Antonio could do nothing but converse of my absent friend; he dwelt on the indescribable grace of your person, the lustre of your eye, and the vermilion of your lips, until ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... There were many maples and oaks. Day by day the roofs of the houses in the village became more evident, as the maples shed their crimson and gold and purple rags of summer. The oaks remained, great shaggy masses of dark gold and burning russet; later they took on soft hues, making clearer the blue firmament between the boughs. Daniel watched the autumn trees with pure delight. "He will go to-day," he said of a flaming maple after a night of frost which had crisped the white arches of the grass in his dooryard. All day he sat and watched the maple cast its ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... a prophet, least of all regarding the weather. But I think it may not be doubted that the fine weather, at least, has passed for Darwinism. So having carefully scanned the firmament of science for signs of the weather, I shall for once make a forecast for Darwinism, namely: Increasing cloudiness with heavy precipitations, indications of a violent storm, which threatens to cause the props ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... Pillar; much less that he was twelve cubits or twelve hundred cubits high; or that his dimensions equalled those of Teneriffe or Atlas; because these, and if they were a million times as high, it would be the same, are bounded. The expression is, 'His stature reached the sky!' the illimitable firmament!—When the imagination frames a comparison, ... a sense of the truth of the likeness from the moment that it is perceived grows—and continues to grow—upon the mind; the resemblance depending less upon outline of form and feature than upon expression and effect, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... Surrendered them at Ulm a month ago, Is now forgotten! Ay; this Trafalgar Will botch up many a ragged old repute, Make Nelson figure as domestic saint No less than country's saviour, Pitt exalt As zenith-star of England's firmament, And uncurse all the bogglers of her weal At this ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... his dreams. Something seemed to happen in the very heavens above; the moon reached down from the sky, swiftly and tenderly, and was so dazzling that the shepherd boy had to turn his face away. He knew that in the blue spaces of the firmament overhead the moon was embracing the Seven Sisters. Then he ran, ran like the wind, for already the water was shrieking down the streets of the town. As he went he could see lights begin to jump in dark windows ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... destroy it, is a God to whose character there cleaves a fatal suspicion of indifference to good, of moral apathy. If I have not a God to trust in that hates evil because He loveth righteousness, then 'the pillared firmament itself were rottenness, and earth's base built on stubble'; nor were there any hope that this damnable thing that is killing and sucking the life-blood out of our spirits should ever be destroyed and cast aside. Oh! it is short-sighted wisdom, and it is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... my heart,—but their dependence claimed my care.—Memories of Evelyn alone possessed me. I secured full files of London papers, and watched for notices of her appearance. At last they came. A new star, the papers said, had suddenly appeared, unheralded, in the theatrical firmament, and rapidly culminated in the zenith. She was understood to be an American lady, formerly an actress, who had returned to the stage on account of domestic difficulties. Some papers intimated that her husband was a brute, who had forsaken her; others, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... rate, Ikey toiled and snipped and basted and pressed and patched and sponged all day in the steamy fetor of a tailor-shop. But when work was done Ikey hitched his wagon to such stars as his firmament ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... the question: "What is greatness?" A great man adds to the sum of knowledge, extends the horizon of thought, releases souls from the Bastille of fear, crosses unknown and mysterious seas, gives new islands and new continents to the domain of thought, new constellations to the firmament of mind. A great man does not seek applause or place; he seeks for truth; he seeks the road to happiness, and what he ascertains he gives to others. A great man throws pearls before swine, and the swine are sometimes changed to men. ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... domesticated in two hemispheres by the household lore of Shakspeare and Otway, Byron and Rogers, Cooper and Ruskin. The ancient temple of St. Mark, the bronze horses of Lysippus, the arched galleries of the Palace, the waters of the Adriatic, the firmament above, and the stones beneath seem instinct with the fame of commercial grandeur, maritime triumphs, and diplomatic prowess; the cheerful arcades that shade the caffes remind us of the "harmless comedy of life" which Goldoni recorded; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... "commissions of experts." But the fruit which took long to mature ripened at last, and Greece had many of her claims allowed. Thus in reorganizing the communities of the world the personal factor played a predominant part. Venizelos was, so to say, a fixed star in the firmament, and his light burned bright through every rift in the clouds. His moderation astonished friends and opponents. Every one admired his expose of his case as a masterpiece. His statesman-like setting, in perspective, the readiness with which he ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... rara avis, our new star of the literary firmament, has come to a complete collapse. Something has snuffed her out; ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... excellent Arthur,' of Thomas Carlyle, a writer who had the art of making not only his own narrative, but the sources of it, attractive. Even 'Carrion-Heath,' in the famous introductory chapter to the Cromwell, is invested with a kind of charm, whilst in the stormy firmament of the French Revolution the star of Arthur Young twinkles with a mild effulgency. The autobiography of such a man could hardly fail to be interesting.[A] The 'good Arthur' was born in 1741, the younger son of a small 'squarson' who inherited from his father ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... company, a third was beginning to come, and it had led to a more friendly intercourse. Mary sent him away, very happy with some books for them, some new Spanish reading for himself, an astronomical book, and her little celestial globe—for the whole firmament of stars had been by no means lost on him. That interview was her Christmas treat. Well for her that she did not hear Robson say, 'That young man knows how to come over the ladies. I shall keep a sharper look-out after him. I know no harm of him, ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... child in the vicinity of Pleasant River was on the way to the circus,—Boomer's Grand Six-in-One Universal Consolidated Show; Brilliant Constellations of Fixed Stars shining in the same Vast Firmament; Glittering Galaxies of World-Famous Equestrian Artists; the biggest elephants, the funniest clowns, the pluckiest riders, the stubbornest mules, the most amazing acrobats, the tallest man and the shortest man, the thinnest woman and the thickest woman, on the habitable globe; and no connection ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the twelve months of the year. He distinguished the winds by twelve special terms, whereas before his time they had but four designations. He paid great attention to astronomy. Being troubled one day at no longer seeing in the firmament one of the known planets, he wrote to Alcuin, "What thinkest thou of this Mars, which, last year, being concealed in the sign of Cancer, was intercepted from the sight of men by the light of the sun? Is it the regular ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... watched her swift flight. He set his teeth and was off after her. A thrill of pleasure possessed him, the joy of swift movement. Near the foot was an abrupt fall to a frozen brook and then a sharp ascent. He rolled over at Leila's feet seeing a firmament of stars and ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... great quenchless lights; men whose minds are the storehouses of knowledge, and whose utterances by word and pen have moved the quickest and most forceful lives in the world. It would be easy to call the long roll of these names shining like stars and constellations in the firmament of thought—princes and kings of intellect who acknowledge that Jesus Christ is not only superior to them morally ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... same room with the microscope and even in railway carriages: what banishes them in the vacuum in gentlemen and lady passengers. How should all the apparatus of heaven and earth, from the farthest firmament to the tender bosom of the mother who nourished us, make poetry for a mind that had no movements of awe and tenderness, no sense of fellowship which thrills from the near to the distant, and back again from the distant to ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... these soaring thoughts winged to "wander through eternity," to come down and work out the terms of a tedious apprenticeship to the senses. And yet, what were thoughts unlocalized and unembodied? Mere comets or vague nebulosities in the firmament, without a ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... down in torrents, enveloping everything in mist and moisture. Suddenly the sun blazes forth with indescribable brilliance and shines through an atmosphere, clear as crystal, from which every particle of dust has been washed away. Fleecy clouds sail majestically across the vaulted firmament. Then follows a gorgeous sunset in which changing colours run riot through sky and clouds—pearly grey, jet black, dark dun, pale lavender, deep mauve, rich carmine, and brightest gold. These colours fade away into the darkness of the night; the ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... remained in Paris and waited. He waited for the brilliant star that was soon to climb the firmament for him, and shed the fulness of its rays over the whole world. Perhaps, the secret voices which whispered in his breast of a dazzling future, and a fabulous career of military glory, had already announced the rising of ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... landscape, running up to a low ridge on the skyline four miles away, was spouting smoke in all directions—sometimes black, sometimes green, and sometimes, where bursting shell and brick-dust intermingled, blood-red. Beyond the ridge all-conquering British aeroplanes occupied the firmament, observing for "mother" and "granny" and signalling encouragement or reproof to these ponderous but sprightly relatives as their shells hit or missed ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... incline to Worship some star. The Greeks Worshiped the sun, And moon under the Name of Isis and Osiris, but I am more like the Arab look to the stars for something sublime and unchanging among all the bright lights that hang and move in the firmament. The North Star Appears to be the most important. The Axis on which our Earth daily turns. The point from which all Mariners calculate their course in mid ocean, and safely guides Them from continent to continent. Without the North ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... these modern ages. The trial has been hard, brother; it has lasted throughout eighteen centuries; but it will last no longer. Look, my brother! see that rosy light, there in the east, gradually spreading over the firmament! Thus will rise the sun of the new emancipation—peaceful, holy, great, salutary, fruitful, filling the world with light and vivifying heat, like the day-star that will soon ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... representation of the twelve apostles of the Lamb, they being in one important sense permanent fixtures in the church. According to chapter 1:20, stars are sometimes used to represent Christian ministers, the analogy as light-givers being obvious. "They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... I spend my summers high in air; At least there are no privet-hedges there. But even then I have no doubt the smell From slopes celestial of asphodel Would fill the firmament ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... to the dispersing, gossiping crowd: "Hold on—hold on, you people! I've got news for you. Folks, this is O'Ryan's night. It's his in the starry firmament. Look at him shine!" he cried, stretching out his arm toward the heavens, where the glittering galaxy hung near the zenith. "Terry O'Ryan—our O'Ryan—he's struck oil—on his ranch it's been struck. Old Vigon found it. Terry's got his own at last. O'Ryan's ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... encompass what was out there. This was a spaceship! A small globular thing of white metal. He could see a rim of it, like a flat ring some ten feet beneath him. A spaceship, and obviously it had left the Earth! There was a black firmament—dead-black monstrous abyss with white blazing points of stars. And then, down below and to one side there was just an edge of a great globe visible. The Earth, with the sunlight edging its sweeping crescent limb—the Earth, down there with ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings
... found portrayed, as if a passenger in a boat, with extended wings; holding in its claws the globe of the sun, or elevated in the firmament, as the type of the creating power of the sun-god Ra, in the meridian. Other deities are sometimes shown praying ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer
... piece of work. It was most emphatically the sort of writing that the world needed. This new author was a genius of the rarest and best sort. Mr. Ward predicted boldly that this new star in the literary firmament was destined to rank among those of the first magnitude. Already, among the banker's closest book friends, the new book was being discussed, and praised. He would bring a copy for Auntie Sue and Betty Jo to read. It was not only the book of the year;—it was, in Homer ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... 'Oh! I love—I love—' I saw a tear start in her eye. She continued: 'I wish I were a little bird, so that I could mount up into the firmament.' ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... third days in Genesis would be confirmed by the demonstration of the truth of the nebular hypothesis; whether it is corroborated by what is known of the nature and probable relative antiquity of the heavenly bodies; whether, if the Hebrew word translated "firmament" in the Authorised Version really means "expanse," the assertion that the waters are partly under this "expanse" and partly above it would be any more confirmed by the ascertained facts of physical geography and meteorology than it was before; whether the creation of the whole ...
— The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature - Essay #4 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the unbounded satisfaction of all, a violent tempest suddenly cleared the sky, and on the 13th of December, shortly after midnight, the Moon, verging towards her last quarter, revealed herself sharp and bright on the dark background of the starry firmament. ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... when the root of a forget-me-not caught the drop of water by her hair and sucked her in, that she might become a floweret, and twinkle brightly as a blue star on the green firmament of earth. ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... the heart and the knowledge of the race against Jesus Christ and His religion. They stretched Galileo on the rack for inventing a telescope which gave new beauty to the psalm, 'The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork.' ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... firmament of time May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not: Like stars to their appointed height they climb, And death is a low mist which cannot blot The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought Lifts a young heart above its mortal ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... verification, when the atmosphere became for an instant faintly luminous with the evanescent, quivering glimmer of the silent, summer lightning. The flash trembled but for a moment in the sky, and was gone again; but in that moment I saw that the firmament was packed with vast masses of dense, heavy, threatening, highly, charged electric cloud, the weird, contorted shapes of which clearly indicated that they were being powerfully acted upon by the mighty antagonistic forces that they carried within their bosoms, and gave ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... the same word as the Scottish braw. Cf. Shakespeare, Sonn. 12. 2: "And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;" Ham. ii. 2. 312: "This brave o'erhanging firmament," etc. It is often used of dress, as also is bravery ( finery); as in T. of S. iv. 3. 57: "With scarfs and fans and double change of bravery." See also Spenser, Mother Hubberds Tale, 858: "Which oft maintain'd his masters braverie" (that ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... mold Does in herself all selves enfold — Kingdoms, destinies, and creeds, Great dreams, and dauntless deeds, Science that metes the firmament, The high, inflexible intent Of one for many sacrificed — Plato's brain, the heart of Christ: All love, all legend, and all lore Are in the ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... Undeserved defeat, but what of that? That didn't soften the smart any. And to think of the circumstances! the first statesman of the age, the capablest man, the best-informed man in the entire world, the loftiest uncrowned head that had moved through the clouds of any political firmament for centuries, sitting here apparently defeated in argument by an ignorant country blacksmith! And I could see that those others were sorry for me—which made me blush till I could smell my whiskers scorching. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... through the leaves. A vista of trees arose on either hand, each one seemingly more massive, more aged than its fellow; some bowed in retrospection, some erect with hope and looking skyward for the new star in their country's firmament. ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... mist at this height above the Charles. The night was still, and the moon westering. The light had a glimmering, metallic essence, as from a cosmic mirror in the firmament. Long shadows of trees and shrubbery lay across the grass. Clear in the moonlit foreground stood an elm, the pride of Tory Hill—springing as a single shaft for twice the measure of a man—springing and spreading there into four giant branches, each of which sprang and spread ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... she; "bleezing at the windows and the rigging, and out at the lum, like a killogie." Upon the which, we all went to the door, and there, to be sure, we did see that the Breadland was burning, the flames crackling high out o'er the trees, and the sparks flying like a comet's tail in the firmament. ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... of honest and happy people in the world who ignore society altogether," answered Beth. "It strikes me that your social stars are mighty few in the broad firmament ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... kisses, Lesbia, miss, you ask would be enough for me? I cannot sum the total number; nay, that were too tough for me. The sands that o'er Cyrene's shore lie sweetly odoriferous, The stars that sprent the firmament when overly stelliferous— Come, Lezzy, please add all of these, until the whole amount of 'em Will sorely vex the rubbernecks attempting ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... succeeded were many: episodes from profane and sacred histories; simulacra of the great saints. A war between giants and pygmies was shown with all its accompanying horrors. The firmament dripped crimson. The four cryptic creatures of Ezekiel's vision came out of the north, a great cloud of "infolding fire" and the colour was amber. A cyclopean and dazzling staircase thronged by moving ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... and made all dim. And only the cold light of the firmament lit thoughts in me restless as the sea on which I tossed, whose moon was dark, yet walked in ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... being at Portsmouth. He had kept in closer touch with the romancer than any of his other friends had since their graduating days, and he had been from the first a believer in his coming literary renown. So, when The Scarlet Letter shone eminent in the firmament of book-land, it was his triumphant "I-told-you-so" that was among the earliest to be heard. And when my father cast about for a more congenial place than Salem to live in, it was to Bridge that he applied for suggestions. He stipulated that the place ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... however, the incomparable advantages, furnished in speed, by the dry plate photography which made my father realize early as anyone, the boundless possibilities thus opened in human attainment for the penetration of the Sidereal firmament. He had made a great number of photographs at Irvington, and the photographic laboratory was a charming illustration of my father's ingenuity and precision. At Mt. Cook we enjoyed a marvellously clear atmosphere ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... that grand fundamental maxim of the Constitution, that no subject of England shall be taxed but by his own consent. To maintain this principle is the common cause of the Whigs on the other side of the Atlantic, and on this. It is the alliance of God and Nature, immutable, eternal, fixed as the firmament of heaven. Resistance to your acts was necessary as it was just; and your vain declarations of the omnipotence of parliament, and your imperious doctrines of the necessity of submission will be found equally impotent to convince or enslave ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... a five-act tragedy in almost as many hours; the greatest of all popularities past or present, and perhaps one of the greatest men that ever ranked among popularities: Lope himself, so radiant, far-shining, has not proved to be a sun or star of the firmament; but is as good as lost and gone out, or plays at best, in the eyes of some few, as a ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... on the horizon. All large towns had a square in their centre, where the religious dances were performed. From the square a certain number of regular roads or streets always ran in the direction of the four quarters of the firmament. There are great varieties in the construction of the houses. Small insignificant huts often stand close to a palace having twenty or twenty-five windows in one front. Private dwellings in the mountainous parts are built of unhewn stone, cemented with a very strong ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... the little woman, her eyes brightening. She caught at the word as though she had descried a new star in the firmament. "I wish I could have them. They cost so much to buy. I might have my washerwoman come and help with the cooking. She cooks pretty well, and I could help her beforehand, but she couldn't wait on table, to save her life. I wonder if you know much about menus. Could ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... and fade, And Orient planets cool with dying fires, Columbia's brilliant star can not be stayed, And, heaven-drawn, towards higher arcs aspires; A Star of Destiny whose searching rays Light all the firmament's remotest ways." ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce
... truth and belief, between God and his children. The clergyman was not a hypocrite—far from it! He was in some measure even a devout man. But in his whole presentation of God and our relation to him, there was neither thought nor phrase germane to sunrise or sunset, to the firmament or the wind or the grass or the trees; nothing that came to the human soul as having a reality true as that of the world but higher; as holding with the life lived in it, with the hopes and necessities of the heart ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... the sweet singer; then pluming his breast, He winged the blue firmament free, Repeating, as homeward he flew ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... of the pestilence; and then another, a tale of the exodus. These three wonderful events, following each other, were the blessings coming from Omniscience and Omnipotence by which the black clouds were driven from the Irish firmament. If one through it all could have dared to hope, and have had from the first that wisdom which has learned to acknowledge that His mercy endureth for ever! And then the same author going on with his series would give in his last ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... beginning to feel a little lively. It is when the sun has gone quite down, and the stars begin to twinkle upon the water, that the ball really opens. Then the gay tumult seems to extinguish every other sound, and to fill the firmament. Oh! they must have a high time of it, these little green-backed frogs that make so much noise throughout the warm nights of June. Sometimes I creep into my canoe and paddle by the light of moon or stars as noiselessly ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... Colorado, the passage of which had been of continuous peril and toil, and on the 30th they ended their exploration at a ranch, from which the way was easy to Salt Lake City. "Now the danger is over," writes Major Powell in his diary; "now the toil has ceased; now the gloom has disappeared; now the firmament is bounded only by the horizon; and what a vast expanse of constellations can be seen! The river rolls by us in silent majesty; the quiet of the camp is sweet; our joy is almost ecstasy. We sit till long after midnight talking of the Grand ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... bring, Where swallows poised on lightest wing; The breeze by which the supple reed Was bent,— The setting sun whose glory filled The firmament? ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... but it does not take us far towards great poetry, to have the sea called "whale-road" or "swan-road" or "gannet's-bath"; though we are getting nearer to it when the sun is called "candle of the firmament" or "heaven's gem." On the whole, the poem is composed in an elaborate, ambitious diction which is not properly governed. Alliteration proves a somewhat dangerous principle; it seems mainly responsible for the way the poet ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... thyme and blooming linden, a glistening veil lay over the forest-clad mountains, there was a stillness over everything, but not the quiet of sleep. It seemed as though all nature retained her breath, as if she felt disposed to allow her image to be imprinted upon the firmament. ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... sonatas for the clavier, and Bach, B. Pasquini wrote, as mentioned in the last chapter, sonatas in three movements, yet we have no knowledge that Bach was acquainted with them. Kuhnau, in fact, however interesting a phenomenon in the musical firmament, is not necessary to explain the appearance of Bach. Joh. Sebastian Bach was undoubtedly acquainted with the "Bible" Sonatas. He must have admired them, but he may have been afraid of the freedom of form ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... women, like Dame Quickly, Katharina, Tamora, Gertrude and Lady Macbeth, he gives us the beautiful, faithful, loving characters of Isabella, Juliet, Desdemona, Perdita, Helena, Miranda, Imogen, Ophelia and Cordelia, whose love-lit words and phrases shine out in the firmament of purity and devotion like ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... two separated fields of cloud, there glided down a ray of unspeakable lustre. But it was not solar light, and there was no heat. The general effect was sad, supremely melancholy. Instead of the shining firmament, spangled with its innumerable stars, shining singly or in clusters, I felt that all these subdued and shaded fights were ribbed in by vast walls of granite, which seemed to overpower me with their weight, and that all this space, great as it was, would not be enough for the march of the humblest ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... Mississippi—one swing in the pure ether for every swing over the green grass; or let me oscillate in it beneath the cool dome of St. Peter's; or drop me in it, as in a balloon, from the zenith, with the whole firmament to rock and expatiate in; and I would not exchange my coarse canvas hammock for the grand state-bed, like a stately coach-and-four, in which they tuck in a king when he passes a night at ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... perceived that in this strange world the light was not derived from any one fixed point, such as our sun, but came in a steady and evenly diffused brightness from every part of the clear and luminous vault of heaven. But, notwithstanding that the heat under that cloudless sky and glowing firmament must have been very great, yet to the inhabitants of that world, whose bodies are composed of quite other elements than ours and have a much higher temperature, the atmosphere, hot as it would appear to us, seems always ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... knowledge of the doctrine that Jesus was the incarnate God, come to visit his people—a very unlikely thing to man's wisdom, yet an idea that has notwithstanding ascended above man's horizon, and shown itself the grandest idea in his firmament? ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... the crannies of the tiled roof. Ere it reached these, however, it had to pass through a great multitude of pendent herrings. Hung up by the gills, layer above layer, nearly to the roof, their last tails came down as low as the laird's head. From beneath nothing was to be seen but a firmament of herring tails. These fish were the last of the season, and were thus undergoing the process of kippering. It was a new venture in the place, and its success as yet ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... mowing and reaping machines. The flame that is creeping from its lair to spring at the roofs of the crowded city is betrayed to its watchful guardians by the American telegraphic fire-alarm, and the conflagration that reddens the firmament is subdued by the inundation that flows upon it from an American steam-fire-engine. In the realm of air, the Frenchman who sent a bubble of silk to the clouds must divide his honors with the American who emptied the clouds themselves of their electric ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... be a fixed star in the firmament of fictional characters as surely as David Harum or Col. Sellers. He is a source of infinite delight, while this story of Mr. Kester's is one of the finest examples of ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... the firmament, Texas, the matter with that baby,' says Peets, 'but you. Which if you'd ever got to him as a yearlin' you'd a-killed Hercules himse'f! Quit yore fussin', an' give Annalinda a chance. Take a lesson from the cub coyote. Roll Annalinda ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... dear Maria, at the common fact (one sees it in every street, in every village), that parental love is oftenest at its zenith in the nursery, and then falls lower and lower on the firmament of human life, as the child gets older and older? Look at all dumb brutes, the lower animals of this our earth; is it not thus by nature's law with them? The lioness will perish to preserve that very whelp, whom she will rend a year or two hence, meeting the young lion ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... did such a work in these Ages as will render him long memorable, more or less. He kindled the infinite dry dung-heap of things; set it blazing heaven-high;—and we all thought, in the French Revolution time, it would burn out rapidly into ashes, and then there would a clear Upper Firmament, if over a blackened Earth, be once more vouchsafed us. The flame is now done, as I once said; and only the dull dung-heap, smokily burning, but not now blazing, remains,—for it was very damp, EXCEPT on the surface, and is by ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... was sad and excruciatingly melancholy. Instead of a noble firmament of blue, studded with stars, there was above me a heavy roof of granite, ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... the glory o' God, an' the firmament showeth his handy-work.' I used, whan I was a lad, to study astronomy a wee, i' the houp o' better hearin' what the h'avens declared aboot the glory o' God: I wud fain un'erstan' the speech ae day cried across the nicht to the ither. But I was sair disapp'intit. The things the astronomer tellt ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... on the text "In the beginning God created heaven and earth," says: "By heaven he does not mean the visible firmament, but the empyrean, that is, the fiery or intellectual firmament, which is not so styled from its heat, but from its splendor; and which was filled with angels directly it ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... neither deny nor am careful to distinguish, seeing that they all tend to the same Divine point, and have reference to heavenly hopes; delights they are in seeing the narrow, black, miserable earth fairly compared with the bright firmament, reachings forward unto the things that are before, and joyfulness in the apparent though unreachable nearness and promise of them. But there are other modes in which infinity may be represented, which are confused by no associations of the kind, and which would, ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... in a treatise by itself, I shall put off its exposition till that time. After this, on the second day, he placed the heaven over the whole world, and separated it from the other parts, and he determined it should stand by itself. He also placed a crystalline [firmament] round it, and put it together in a manner agreeable to the earth, and fitted it for giving moisture and rain, and for affording the advantage of dews. On the third day he appointed the dry land to appear, with the sea itself round about it; and on ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... self-congratulation. He was rapidly becoming rich, and there were bright prospects of even greater triumphs, with proportionately greater reward. He had made Gideon a national character, a headliner, a star of the first magnitude in the firmament of the vaudeville theater, and all in six short months. Or, at any rate, he had helped to make him all this; he had booked him well and given him his opportunity. To be sure, Gideon had done the rest; ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... a world unknown, On nothing we could call our own. Around the glistening wonder bent The blue walls of the firmament, No cloud above, no earth below,— A universe of sky ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... dark, the weather somewhat thick, the stars pale over the trucks, and hidden in the obscurity a little way down the dusky slope of firmament. Windsails were wriggling fore and aft like huge white snakes, gaping for the tops and writhing out of the hatches. The flush of sunset was dying when I came on deck. I saw the captain slowly pacing the weather side of the poop with Miss Le Grand. He seemed ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... public life and started a boarding-house, as you may still remember, and I was with her a good while, and almost every day added a few stars to the firmament, as Mr. Dog calls it. Once she flung the milk-pitcher at my head, and when it hit and broke, it seemed to add some to the Milky Way. Several of those fancy designs up there I can remember making. ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... tosses it about like a Titan. "The spirit of the hills is action, that of the lowlands, repose; and between these there is to be found every variety of motion and of rest, from the inactive plain, sleeping like the firmament, with cities for stars, to the fiery peaks which, with heaving bosoms and exulting limbs, with clouds drifting like hair from their bright foreheads, lift up their Titan hands to heaven saying, 'I live for ever.'" We learn, too, a wonderful ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... with weeping, have I waited and wished for the parting away of the tedious clouds, that, with my telescope, I might gaze on the wonders and beauties of the worlds above. But never did I bend a more anxious eye to the darkened firmament, than in my solitary wanderings over the Georgia hills that memorable night. But all in vain; no North Star appeared to point with beam of hope to ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... river, seen through which the trees were the ghosts of trees, and the water was the ghost of water. This earth looked spectral, and so did the pale stars: while the cold eastern glare, expressionless as to heat or colour, with the eye of the firmament quenched, might have been likened to ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... and guests with lavish liberality, superbly indifferent to the cost of his boundless extravagance and considering not at all the day of reckoning that must come later for the Bourbon dynasty in France. To glow with commanding brilliance, like the Sun, in the center of his royal firmament, to overwhelm his subjects with his grandeur, and to dazzle the eyes of other nations—that was the ambition that Louis cherished ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... a force which greatly increased the difficulties of navigation. I still insisted, as long as it was possible to do so, on holding on our course. After sunset, the strength of the wind abated. The night came without a cloud, and the starry firmament gave us its pale and glittering light. In an hour more the capricious wind shifted back again in our favor. Toward ten o'clock we sailed into the desolate harbor ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... in every constitution a certain solstice, when the stars stand still in our inward firmament, and when there is required some foreign force, some diversion or alternative, to prevent stagnation. And, as a medical remedy, travel seems one of the best. Just as a man witnessing the admirable effect of ether to lull pain, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... lives in a long rambling bungalow furnished with folding chairs and tables, and in every way marked by the provisional arrangements of camp life. He seems to have just arrived from out of the firmament of green fields and mango groves that encircles the little station where he lives; or he seems just about to pass away into it again. The shooting-howdahs are lying in the verandah, the elephant of a neighbouring landowner is swinging ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... have looked on that delicious summer night at Belmont when they saw "how the floor of heaven is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold," and when the blissful lover, radiant with happiness and exalted by the sublime, illimitable, unfathomable spectacle of the star-strewn firmament, murmured, in such heaven-like cadence, of the authentic music ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... entrenched camp, to encounter their assailants. There was a fierce action for a few moments, the shouts of the combatants, the heavy discharge of cannon, the rattle of musketry; the tramp of heavy-aimed foot soldiers, the rush of cavalry, being distinctly heard. The firmament trembled with the shock of the contending hosts, and was lurid with the rapid discharges of their artillery. After a short, fierce engagement, the north-western army was beaten back in disorder, but rallied again, after a breathing-time, formed again ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... their armies and the disgrace of their policy—even they could bless the convulsion in which he had his origin), "for if the heavens thundered and the earth rocked yet when the storm had passed how pure was the atmosphere it cleared, how bright in the brow of the firmament was the planet it revealed to earth." An hundred years have passed since Washington, crowned with the honors of the successful chieftain, having led his country through the turmoil of seven years of blood ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... Zeppelin had crossed the Danube, and all the church bells began to peal. Suddenly darkness and silence reigned, and the whole town, like some great angry animal, sullen and morose, prepared for the enemy attack. Nowhere was there light or sound. The town, with a wonderful starry firmament overhead, waited in expectation. Fifteen, twenty minutes went by, when suddenly a shot was fired and, as though it were a signal, firing broke out in every direction. The anti-aircraft guns fired incessantly, ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... never hurt; Surprised by unjust force, but not enthralled. But evil on itself shall back recoil, And mix no more with goodness. If this fail, The pillared firmament is rottenness, And ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... star pass out of range, becoming a comet. But if the velocity of the vortex into which the incrusted star settles be equivalent to that of the surrounded vortex, it will hold it as a captive, still revolving and "wrapt in its own firmament." Thus the several planets of our solar system have been captured and held by the sun-vortex, as have ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... in the furthest saloon?" asked the learned man. "Was it there as in the fresh woods? Was it there as in a holy church? Were the saloons like the starlit firmament when we ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... thickening cloud of arrows filled the firmament on high, Darker, deeper, dread and deadlier, grew ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... Divil an' all his angils an' the Firmament av Hiven fly away wid the 'Mister,' an' the sin av making me swear be on your confession, Dinah Shadd! Privit, I tell ye. Wid Privit Mulvaney's best obedience, that but for me the last time-expired wud be still pullin' hair on their ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... far the ground is very firm beneath us, without either inspiration, teaching, or any aid whatever. Since, then, there must be a world Maker, let us judge of His nature by His work. We cannot observe the glories of the firmament, its infinite extent, its beauty, and the Divine skill wherewith every plant and animal hath its wants cared for, without seeing that He is full of wisdom, intelligence, and power. We are still, you will perceive, upon solid ground, ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The spacious firmament on high, With all the blue ethereal sky, And spangled heavens—a shining frame— Their great Original proclaim. Th' unwearied sun from day to day. Doth his Creator's power display. And publishes to every land The work of ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor |
