"Spire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he scanned the roof of the cathedral, and noticing its stunted central tower, could not help thinking how much more striking its effects must have been, when the lofty spire it once supported was standing. The spire, it may be remarked, was twice destroyed by lightning; first in February, 1444, and subsequently in June, 1561, when it was entirely burnt down, and never ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... high, and accessible only by steps cut in the earth. All the land is divided into little rectangular patches of various verdure, —yellow-blossomed broom, blue-flowering flax, and the contrasting green of lupines, beans, Indian corn, and potatoes. There is not a spire of genuine grass on the island, except on the Consul's lawn, but wilds covered with red heather, low faya-bushes, (whence the name of the island,) and a great variety of mosses. The cattle are fed on ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... tobacco plants whose leaves do not spread and grow large, but rather spire upward and grow tall; these plants they do not tend, not being worth their labor."—Mr. Clayton's Letter to the Royal Society, 1688. Miscellanea ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... be time enough to trace out the analogy while waiting the summons to breakfast. Seen through the clear portion of the glass, where the silvery mountain peaks of the frost scenery do not ascend, the most conspicuous object is the steeple, the white spire of which directs you to the wintry luster of the firmament. You may almost distinguish the figures on the clock that has just tolled the hour. Such a frosty sky, and the snow-covered roofs, and the long vista of the frozen street, all white, and the distant water hardened into ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... plain, sinuous river, and broad, tranquil waters, stately ship and tiny boat, gentle hill and shady valley, bold headland and rich, fruitful fields, frowning battlement and cheerful villa, glittering dome and rural spire, flowery garden and sombre forest,—group them all into the choicest picture of ideal beauty your fancy can create; arch it over with a cloudless sky, light it up with a radiant sun, and lest the sheen should be too dazzling, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... quoted by Moses in the Pentateuch. Put it up, Wellingborough, put it up, my dear friend; and hereafter follow your nose throughout Liverpool; it will stick to you through thick and thin: and be your ship's mainmast and St. George's spire ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... fashion, because they saw their mother weep, filled me with terror for them, though I did not for myself fear death; and all my thoughts were bent to contrive means for their safety. I tied my youngest son to the end of a small spire mast, such as seafaring men provide against storms; at the other end I bound the youngest of the twin slaves, and at the same time I directed my wife how to fasten the other children in like manner to another mast. She thus having the care ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... it was supposed, would bring with them as many more. They marched out of Vihiers early on the Tuesday morning, having remained there only about a couple of hours, and before nightfall they saw the spire of Doue church. They then rested, intending to force their way into the town early on the following morning; but they had barely commenced their preparations for the evening, when a party of royalists came out to them from the town, inviting ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... ripe upon the far hill slopes. The sun bathed the lap of the land with his midday summer warmth. Along the crest of the distant hills ran the line of tall, regular trees which in this country invariably means a road. A church spire rose from a tree clump on a nearer crest. Some of the foreground was pitted with the ugly red splashes which have become for us, in this horrible area, the normal feature of the countryside. But, beyond it, was the green country spread out like a picture, sleeping under ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... pleasure of seeing her; and he would often walk half-way over to the parsonage, and then back again, as if to whet his appetite. Indeed there was one corner of the road, whence he could see the church-spire wedged into a crevice of the valley between sloping firwoods, with a triangular snatch of plain by way of background, which he greatly affected as a place to sit and moralise in before returning homewards; ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... begins the danger; then they differ about throwing out the ballast, the balloon is rent in the quarrel, it sinks with frightful rapidity, and they run the hazard, like the poor Marquis D'Arlande, of being spitted upon the spire of the Invalides, or of being entangled among woods and briers—at last, alighting upon the earth, our adventurers, fatigued and bruised and disappointed, come out of their shattered triumphal car, exposed to the ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... of healthy, open English country. Purple hills hemmed in a broad, green, undulating plateau, scored across and across by the stone walls of the north, and all dappled with the shadows of rolling leaden clouds with silver fringes. Miles away a church spire stuck like a spike out of the hollow, and the smoke of a village dimmed the trees behind. No nearer habitation could I see. I have mentioned a hamlet which we passed in the spring-cart. It lay hidden behind some hillocks to the left. My landlady told me it was better than half a mile away, ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... Madam. This shewes exlent in you; No pennance shall displease so you absolve me. Bid me to clime some Rock or Pyramide, Upon whose narrow spire you have advanc'd My peace, and I will reach it or else fall, Lost to the world in ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... up. 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 of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... ways we wandered, and how strove To build with fire-tried vows the piteous home Which memory haunts and whither sleep may roam,— They only know for whom the roof of Love Is the still-seated secret of the grove, Nor spire may rise nor bell be ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... churches, the most prominent is the Roman Catholic Church, a white frame building with two great towers; Mr. Coan's native church with a spire comes next; and then the neat little foreign church, also with a spire. The Romish Church is a rather noisy neighbour, for its bells ring at unnatural hours, and doleful strains of a band which cannot play either in time or tune proceed from it. The court-house, a large buff painted frame-building ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... on down to Wall Street, Uncle," he continued, "and go into Trinity Church. There's a magnificent view from the spire." ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... poets, and to the many excellent French studies on the subject by such distinguished and well-equipped authors as Remy de Gourmont, Gustave Kahn, Georges Duhamel, Charles Vildrac, Henri Gheon, Robert de Souza, Andre Spire, etc. ...
— Some Imagist Poets - An Anthology • Richard Aldington
... ran, her gray locks streaming in the wind, to the parsonage of a little church near by and inquired for the minister, but was told by his wife that he had been gone for several weeks to a watering place in the mountains. The old woman ran on further, till she came to a great church whose majestic spire seemed to touch the clouds. A stately rectory was near. Soft music, mingled with merry voices, came out to her through the open doors. Awkwardly and tremblingly she went up the polished marble steps and rang. A servant in livery told her gruffly that his master was dining with his bishop and other ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... gold, but even with its glory it could not change the ugly square-built temple, with no curves or grace to mark it as a dwelling-place of Gods. Kang walked slowly around this temple, looked long at its staring windows and its tall and ugly spire upon the rooftree which seemed to force its way into the kindly blue sky; then, saddened, sick at heart, he turned homeward, saying deep within him no God whom he could reverence would choose for a dwelling-place a house so ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... 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
... at the bottom, with many willows, and pools fringed with withered sedges. The fields were mostly pastures, with here and there a fallow. There were a good many bits of woodland all about, and a tall spire of pale stone, far to the south, overtopped the roofs of a little town. I was met by an old groom or coachman, with a little ancient open cart, and we drove sedately along pleasant lanes, among woods, till we entered a tiny village, which he told me was Aveley, consisting of three or four farmhouses, ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... nearer to St. Petersburg, hundreds of gilded domes and towers flashing in the warm sunlight come swiftly into view. Some of the spires are of such great height in proportion to their diameter as to appear needle-like. Among those reaching so far heavenward are the slender spire of the Cathedral of Peter and Paul, nearly four hundred feet in height, and the lofty pinnacle of the Admiralty Building. Notwithstanding its giddy towers and looming palaces rising above the level of ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... was much connected with Yarmouth in his young days, when his father was the incumbent of the parish church. Some of his boyish pranks were peculiar. Here is one of them: 'Having taken two pillows from his mother's bed, he carried them up the spire of Yarmouth Church, at a time when the wind was blowing from the north-east; and as soon as he had ascended as high as he could, he ripped them open, and, shaking out their contents, dispersed them in the air. The feathers were carried away by the wind, and fell ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... the spring wagon this morning and drove to the Centre to church. It's a sweet little white frame church with a spire and three Doric columns in front (or maybe Ionic—I always get ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... Sir Lanval reft of sense appear'd; Then up at once his mailed limbs he rear'd, And with his guides impatient to proceed, Though a true knight, for once forgot his steed. And now with costliest silk superbly dight, A gay pavilion greets the warrior's sight; Its taper spire a towering eagle crown'd, In substance gold, of workmanship renown'd. Within, recumbent on a couch, was laid A form more perfect than e'er man survey'd: The new-blown rose, the lily's virgin prime, In the fresh hour of fragrant ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... distance. A huge smoke pall, its feathery top drifting slowly eastward, hung over a cup-shaped depression, and below it stretched a darker line, from which occasionally emerged a solitary stack, or above which a church spire, caught by an errant ray from the setting sun, would flash a momentary beacon. Slowly the mantle seemed to fade and mingle with the twilight, and even as they watched, a light flashed out, a single pin-prick of a light, and then ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... waves of ebbing day Rolled o'er the glen their level way; 185 Each purple peak, each flinty spire, Was bathed in floods of living fire. But not a setting beam could glow Within the dark ravines below, Where twined the path in shadow hid, 190 Round many a rocky pyramid, Shooting abruptly from the dell Its thunder-splintered pinnacle; ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... had always shunned the port of London, I only knew the church through his pointing out its spire from on board. Perhaps I might recall, if it were any good to try, the way by which I went to it alone from the river; but how we two went from it to Riderhood's shop, I don't know—any more than I know what turns ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... old Port Royal, the resort of buccaneers, in 1692. The harbor of Kingstown is commonly supposed to cover the site of the old settlement. There is a tradition that a buoy for many years was attached to the spire of a sunken church in order to warn mariners. Three thousand persons perished in ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... rising Sun; the overpowering lustre of which is diminished by a soft and precious Claude-like haze that hangs like a gauze of gossamer on the borders of their way, a bridal veil just being lifted by the Sun; tempering while it enriches the gilding of the shores, the waters, the far-off spire, the contented farmer's house and barns, the unfrequent trees, the cattle gazing at the approaching object, the sail you are overtaking or meeting, and often, the fisherman, seen in the distance, standing in his boat on the margin of the river, in his white shirt-sleeves, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... from the soaring lyric of the spire, Like the composite voice of all the town, The bells burst swiftly into singing fire That wrapped the building, and which showered down Bright cadences to flash along the ways Loud with the splendid gladness ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... throughout the Netherlands, upon the advent of peace. All was joy in the provinces, but at Antwerp, the metropolis of the land, the enthusiasm was unbounded. Nine days were devoted to festivities. Bells rang their merriest peals, artillery thundered, beacons blazed, the splendid cathedral spire flamed nightly with three hundred burning cresaets, the city was strewn with flowers and decorated with triumphal arches, the Guilds of Rhetoric amazed the world with their gorgeous processions, glittering dresses and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... hot touch, so 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
... English gathered in their harvests, adorned their cities, pleaded, traded, and studied in security. Many of our noblest architectural monuments belong to that age. Then rose the fair chapels of New College and of Saint George, the nave of Winchester and the choir of York, the spire of Salisbury and the majestic towers of Lincoln. A copious and forcible language, formed by an infusion of French into German, was now the common property of the aristocracy and of the people. Nor was it long before genius began to apply that admirable ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... affected all classes alike. Every feeling of pity seemed to have been blotted out. Natural affection disappeared. A man's foes were those of his own household. On the plea of religious zeal the most barbarous acts were committed. Spire Niquet, a poor bookbinder, whose scanty earnings barely sufficed to support the wants of his seven children, was half-roasted in a bonfire made of his own books, and then dragged to the river and drowned.[1018] The weaker sex was not spared in the universal ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... him, and should be to the world, whether it was a spade or a shovel so long as the soft twilight, and the reverent figures wearied with the day's work, and the flat waste of field stretching away to the little village spire on the dim horizon line told the story of human suffering and patience and toil, as with folded hands they listened to the ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... desperate and write bad poetry. In another, she is depicted as a stately dame, in the maturity of her charms; next to the portrait of her husband, a gallant colonel in full-bottomed wig and gold-laced hat, who was killed abroad; and, finally, her monument is in the church, the spire of which may be seen from the window, where her effigy is carved in marble, and represents her as a ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... thyoides, the wild pine, with two or three other sorts of pine less common. The two first make up almost two-thirds of the whole; and, at a distance, might be mistaken for the same tree, as they both run up into pointed spire-like tops, but they are easily distinguished on coming nearer from their colour, the cypress being of a much paler green, or shade, than the other. The trees, in general, grow with great vigour, and are all of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... from the road. Occasionally, indeed, the fog would become less dense, and we could see the fine lawns of the seats of the nobility and gentry, which were scattered on our route, and which still retained their verdure. Now and then the spire and towers of some ancient village church rose out of the leafless trees, beautifully simple in their forms, and sometimes clothed to the very tops with the evergreen ivy. It was severely cold; my eyebrows, hair, cap, ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... midnight when 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 ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... thing was foreseen; but in 1859 Polterham was hardly conscious of the stirrings of that new life which, in the course of twenty years, was to transform the town. In those days a traveller descending the slope of the Banwell Hills sought out the slim spire of Polterham parish church amid a tract of woodland, mead and tillage; now the site of the thriving little borough was but too distinctly marked by trails of smoke from several gaunt chimneys—that of Messrs. Dimes & Nevison's blanket-factory, that ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... features, neither of which can be left out, want a little bringing together or separating before the spirit of the place can be well given, they must be brought together, or separated. Which is a more truthful view, of Shrewsbury, for example, from a spot where St. Alkmund's spire is in parallax with St. Mary's—a view which should give only the one spire which can be seen, or one which should give them both, although the one is hidden? There would be, I take it, more representation in the misrepresentation than in the representation—"the half would be greater than ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... my questions void and vain one moment turned his speech; Who from the inmost of his heart a heavy groan did reach: 'O Goddess-born, flee forth,' he said, 'and snatch thee from the fire! The foeman hath the walls, and Troy is down from topmost spire. 290 For Priam and for country now enough. If any hand Might have kept Pergamos, held up by mine it yet should stand. Her holy things and household gods Troy gives in charge to thee; Take these as fellows of thy fate: go forth the ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... principal church, also—a curious old structure, with a towerlike spire adorned with all sorts of grotesque images. The inner walls of the church were placarded with large mural tablets of copper, bearing engraved inscriptions celebrating the merits of old Heilbronn worthies of two or three centuries ago, and also bearing rudely ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wistful 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 ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... much the same relation to that of Fig. 14 as did the clearly outlined projectile of Fig. 10 to the indeterminate cloud of Fig. 8. We could hardly have a more marked contrast than that between the inchoate flaccidity of the nebulosity in Fig. 14 and the virile vigour of the splendid spire of highly developed devotion which leaps into being before us in Fig. 15. This is no uncertain half-formed sentiment; it is the outrush into manifestation of a grand emotion rooted deep in the knowledge of fact. The man who feels ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... houses, with gaping 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 ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Lady Carr, or me. Just think how happy she must be! The Ball-Room, with its painted sky Where heavy angels seem to fly, Is a dull place; its size and gloom Make them prefer, for drawing-room, The Library, all done up new And comfortable, with a view Of Salisbury Spire between the boughs. When she had shown me through the house, (I wish I could have let her know That she herself was half the show; She is so handsome, and so kind!) She fetch'd the children, ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... evening sun Across the long-lit meads and distant spire: So sleep thou well—like his thy labour done; Rest in thy glory as ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... everywhere saw great numbers of partridges (Nothura major). These birds do not go in coveys, nor do they conceal themselves like the English kind. It appears a very silly bird. A man on horseback by riding round and round in a circle, or rather in a spire, so as to approach closer each time, may knock on the head as many as he pleases. The more common method is to catch them with a running noose, or little lazo, made of the stem of an ostrich's feather, fastened to the end of a long stick. A boy on a quiet old horse will frequently thus ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... when we halted in a wood with the first light of day, and the wearied soldiers made themselves beds amid the dried fern and fallen leaves, I approached the Maid, who was gazing wistfully towards the tapering spire of a church, visible at some distance away, and ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the Napoleonic glare, Divinely raised by that in her divine, Not the clear sight of Earth's blunt actual swerves When her lost look, as on a wave of wine, Rolls Eastward, and the mother-flag descries Caress with folds and curves The fortress over Rhine, Beneath the one tall spire. Despite her brooding thought, her nightlong sighs, Her anguish in desire, She sees, above the brutish paw Alert on her still quivering limb - As little in past time she saw, Nor when dispieced as prey, As victrix when abhorred - A Grand Germania, stout ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... noon's pale core— A shadow that lifts clear and floats— The cabin'd village round the shore, The landing and the fringe of boats; Faint films of smoke that curl and wreathe, And upward with the like desire The vast gray church that seems to breathe In heaven with its dreaming spire. ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... Madam, had you scene with what a vehemency He did blaspheme the gods, Like to a man pearcht on some lofty Spire Amazed which way to relieve himselfe, You would have stood, as ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... roll things to the level which you love, That you could stand at ease there and survey The universal Nothing undisgraced By pert obtrusion of some old church-spire I' ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... richly adorned with marble and mosaic which permits the tomb to be seen. On one side of the building were erected two sacristies and a lofty campanile, five times as high as it is broad. Above it there was originally a lofty spire of eight sides, but it was removed because it threatened to fall down. The work was brought to a conclusion in the space of four years and no more by the ability of Master Jacopo the German, and by the industry of friar Elias. After the friar's death twelve strong ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... Dr. Franklin was so impressed with the many points of resemblance between lightning and electricity, that he was convinced of their identity, and determined to ascertain by direct experiment the truth of his bold conjecture. A spire which was erecting at Philadelphia he conceived might assist him in this inquiry; but, while waiting for its completion, the sight of a boy's kite, which had been raised for amusement, immediately suggested to him a more ready method of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... began to go soon, and when one was fairly caught its high spire was seen to quiver for a moment as if it were in pain, and then topple right over with a crash. The dangers were increased by the falling of such great masses of stone. The whole of that night the flames roared on, and devoured everything ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... Ethelbert, 610 A.D. Three hundred years later this building was burned, but soon it was rebuilt. Again it was destroyed by fire, 1087, and a new edifice begun which was 200 years in completion. This church, old St. Paul's, was 590 feet long, and had a leaden-covered, timber spire, 460 feet high. In 1445 this spire was injured by lightning, and in 1561 the building was again burned. Says Mr. Baedeker, whose guidebook is indispensable in the hands of a traveler, "Near the cathedral stood the celebrated Cross of St. Paul, where sermons were preached, papal ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... state of mind they, like the pagans of ancient Rome, charge them with horrible crimes, and seize the slightest occasion for murderous attack. A church [Page 262] spire is said to disturb the good luck of a neighbourhood—the people burn the building. A rumour is started that babies in a foundling hospital have their eyes taken out to make into photographic medicine—the hospital is demolished and the Sisters of Charity killed. A skeleton found ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... palpable astonishment of Mike, who could not help regarding me as one from whom fortune met the most ungrateful returns. At every new turn of the road he would endeavor to attract my attention by the objects around,—no white-turreted chateau, no tapered spire in the distance, escaped him; he kept up a constant ripple of half-muttered praise and censure upon all he saw, and instituted unceasing comparisons between the country and his own, in which, I am bound to say, Ireland rarely, if ever, had ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... of the salt pillar, since Lynch, deserves mention. It appears that the travellers immediately after him found it shaped by the storms into a spire; that a year or two later it had utterly disappeared; and about the year 1870 Prof. Palmer, on visiting the place, found at some distance from the main salt bed, as he says, "a tall, isolated needle of rock, which ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... flanked the hill in gentle decline. Before crossing it, and losing sight of the town, he stopped his horse and cast a look back. Lancia was a heap, albeit not large, of red roofs over which waved the dark arrow on the cathedral spire. Below was a yellow spot—the oak-wood of the Grange, and a little lower down were the old orange-coloured turrets of his solitary house. The rain had ceased. A cold wind dispersed the clouds and scattered them behind the mountains; the sky became ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... by N. and W. by S., and is ten leagues long in that direction, and no where above three or four leagues broad. The coast is rocky, much indented, and seemed to form several bays or inlets. It shews a surface of craggy hills which spire up to a vast height, especially near the west end. Except the craggy summits of the hills, the greatest part was covered with trees and shrubs, or some sort of herbage, and there was little or no snow on it. The currents between ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... are sworn foes to the picturesque; and though I do not, for my own part, dislike the interior of an old-fashioned hewed and galleried church, with its little family settlements on all sides, the square box outside, with its bit of a spire like a handle to lift it by, is not an improvement to the landscape. Still a cluster of houses on differing elevations, with scraps of garden coming in between, a hedgerow with clothes laid out to dry, the opening ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... feet high, and the upper stone about twenty. I was endeavoring to find some gap in the hedge, when I discovered one of the inhabitants in the next field, advancing toward the stile, of the same size with him whom I saw in the sea pursuing our boat. He appeared as tall as an ordinary spire steeple, and took about ten yards at every stride, as near as I could guess. I was struck with the utmost fear and astonishment, and ran to hide myself in the corn, whence I saw him at the top of the stile looking back into the next field, on the right hand, and heard him call in a ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... the more I observed it the less did it 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 social ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... beyond the Rhine, a market town, with neat houses carefully whitewashed and with gardens attached, spreads itself around a little cove, like a fan. Upon the right of this great village a rustic church reflects the sun from its tinned spire; on the left, some large mills show their lazily turning wheels, and behind these mills, the church and the market town, extends the fertile plain which I have just endeavored to describe to you, and which I cannot praise ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... closed in, and I saw that we had come out of the hills and were in flat country. Sometimes a big sweep of river showed, and, looking out at one station I saw a funny church with a thing like an onion on top of its spire. It might almost have been a mosque, judging from the pictures I remembered of mosques. I wished to heaven I had given geography ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... sudden sharper note as bee or bluefly 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 ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the windmill, sailing on the aqueduct, sailing through the green corn-lands: the most picturesque of things amphibious. Or the horse plods along at a foot-pace, as if there were no such thing as business in the world; and the man dreaming at the tiller sees the same spire on the horizon all day long. It is a mystery how things ever get to their destination at this rate; and to see the barges waiting their turn at a lock affords a fine lesson of how easily the world may be taken. There should be many contented spirits on board, for such a life is both to travel and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nel suo figlio con l' amore Che l' uno e l' altro eternalmente spire, Lo primo ed ineffabile Valore, Quanto per mente o per loco si gira Con tanto ordine fe', ch' esser non puote Senza gustar di ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... twilight; in the white road before us The straw from the ox-yard is blowing about; The moon's rim is rising, a star glitters o'er us, And the vane on the spire-top is swinging in doubt. ...
— Chants for Socialists • William Morris
... on the wooden pillars; yet higher in the gutters along the roof; yet higher about the pigeon-cote; higher still over the skylights in the roof of the mairie; yet higher in the spire of St. Christopher's; and all this ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... amid the amber mist, That softly wreathes each mountain-spire, The sky its clustered columns kissed, And touched ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... lose their snowy summits in the skies; Above those mountains proud Olympus towers, The parliamental seat of heavenly powers. New to the sight, my ravish'd eyes admire Each gilded crescent and each antique spire, The marble mosques, beneath whose ample domes Fierce warlike sultans sleep in peaceful tombs; Those lofty structures, once the Christians boast, Their names, their beauty, and their honours lost; Those altars bright with gold and sculpture grac'd, ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... This ladi tho was crope aside, As sche that wolde hireselven hide, For sche ne wiste what thei were: Thei soghte aboute and founde hir there And broghten up hire child and hire; And therupon this lord to spire Began, fro whenne that sche cam, And what sche was. Quod sche, "I am A womman wofully bestad. I hadde a lord, and thus he bad, 1150 That I forth with my litel Sone Upon the wawes scholden wone, Bot why the cause was, I not: Bot he ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... stairway, by which we had reached the door of our gallery, wound upward beyond it to the top of the tower, and gave issue by a low doorway upon the dwarf battlements, from which sprang a spire some eighty feet high. This spire was, in fact, a narrowing octagon, its sides hung with slate, its eight ridges faced with Bath stone, and edged from top to ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Swelled on the breeze of victory through our streets, But yesterday—our banners flaunted out Like flowers the south wind woos from their retreats; Flowers of the nation, blue, and white, and red, Waving from balcony, and spire, and mast; Which told us that war's wintry storm had fled, And spring was more than spring to ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... a country journey we arrive at the summit of a hill, at whose foot lies a charming village imbosomed in trees from the midst of which, rises the white spire of the village church. If we are in a poetical mood, we say: "How beautiful is this retirement! This quiet retreat, away from the world's distractions and great temptations, must be the abode of domestic and social virtue—the home ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... own cigars after having declined that which I offered him, and this little evidence of his superior taste served to confirm my opinion of his importance. He crossed his legs carelessly, leaned back and watched a long spire of smoke rise ceilingward. "So you are thinking of journalism, ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... reach home. Now and 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 ...
— A Little Maid of Old Philadelphia • Alice Turner Curtis
... cases, the effect of the whole street depends on the prominence of the gables; not only of the fronts towards the streets, but of the sides also, set with small garret or dormer windows, each of the most fantastic and beautiful form, and crowned with a little spire or pinnacle. Wherever there is a little winding stair, or projecting bow window, or any other irregularity of form, the steep ridges shoot into turrets and small spires, as in fig. 8,[6] each in its turn crowned by a fantastic ornament, covered ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... and still older church, with its reverend screen of trees, and slowly ascending a hill side, from whence he obtained enchanting peeps of the spire and college of Harrow, he reached the cluster of well-built houses which constitute the village of Neasdon. From this spot a road, more resembling the drive through a park than a public thoroughfare, led him gradually to the brow of Dollis Hill. It was a serene and charming ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... from one end only, where it is flush with the face of the rock; and these openings are filled with Flamboyant windows, which are very evident insertions. On the surface of the hill over this church, but with a large space of solid rock intervening, is the tower and spire belonging to it. The tower is of late Norman and Transitional character surmounted by a Flamboyant crocketed spire. There is a kind of well or flue cut through the rock under the tower into the church below, ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... before and at the conquest; from the circumstance of its being built with the materials of the neighbouring Roman work, it will perhaps be no anachronism to assign to it a date prior to that period. The tower is also Saxon; and the spire having been damaged by the wind ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... people would knock off the top part of Antwerp Cathedral spire. Nothing can be more gracious and elegant than the lines of the first two compartments; but near the top there bulges out a little round, ugly, vulgar Dutch monstrosity (for which the architects have, no doubt, ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and diminished in the immeasurable drifts that filled it, and that hid the streams in depths almost as great above their ice as those of the currents below. The villages of the habitans sparkled from tinned roof and spire, and the city before him rose from shore and cliff with a thousand plumes of silvery smoke. In and out among the frozen shipping swarmed an active life that turned the rivers into highroads, and speckled the expanse of glistening white ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... 10th, Emperor Lamb; 11th, Pope Innocent,—higher than which is nothing. Puns I have not made many (nor punch much) since the date of my last; one I cannot help relating. A constable in Salisbury Cathedral was telling me that eight people dined at the top of the spire of the cathedral; upon which I remarked that they must be very sharp-set. But in general I cultivate the reasoning part of my mind more than the imaginative. I am stuffed out so with eating turkey for dinner, and another turkey for supper yesterday (turkey in Europe and turkey ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... and felt its loveliness blindly. A passing thrill of wonder and devotion fled through his fourteen-year-old soul as he regarded it idly. Down there was home and all his interests and loyalty. His eyes dwelt affectionately on the pointing spire and bell tower. He loved those bells, and the one who played them, and under their swelling tones had been awakened new thoughts and lofty purposes. He knew they were lofty. He was not yet altogether sure that they were his, but they were there in his mind for him to think about, and there was ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... 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
... little pinnacles of mischievous quartz, which have set themselves, at the same time, on the same foundation; only they lean like the tower of Pisa, and come out obliquely at the side: and here is one great spire of quartz which seems as if it had been meant to stand straight up, a little way off; and then had fallen down against the pyramid base, breaking its pinnacle away. In reality, it has crystallized horizontally, and terminated imperfectly: but, then, by what caprice ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... climbing, higher and higher, The branches blow and I see a spire, The gleam of a turret, the glint of a dome, All sparkling and bright, ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... scarcely expected that he or his comrade would sleep in again. It was pitched beside a diminutive strip of boggy natural prairie under the towering range, though the latter was then shrouded in sliding mist out of which the climbing firs raised here and there a ragged spire or somber branch. The smoke of the cooking-fire hung in heavy blue wreaths about the tent, and a thick rain beat into ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... stands on a flight of usually three steps, and is surmounted by a low pyramid of five steps; on this is placed a swelling, urn-shaped body, which represents the hemisphere, and is surmounted by another cube. On the latter is a slender, round or angled spire (represented by a pyramid in Burma), crowned with a crescent and disc, or sun, in moon. Generally, the whole is of stone, with the exception of the spire, which is of wood, painted red.] between eight and thirty feet high. The largest is consecrated to the memory of the Rajah's ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... moment on the outside. The spire points upward and teaches its lesson of aspiration. "Lift up your hearts," it seems to say, and holds up the Cross as that by which alone we are to be "exalted unto everlasting life." Whenever we {19} lift ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... Mrs. Washington destroyed all of his letters. There is only one of them to be found which was written after their marriage. It is in an old book, printed in New York in 1796, when the narrow streets around the tall spire of Trinity were the centre of social life, and the busy hum of Wall Street was not to be heard ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... 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
... on, on they flew over the trees, and over the houses, over the windings of the Nidda. Walter could hear the tinkle tinkle of sheep bells below, or was it possible that he could already hear the bells of fairyland ringing? Over the church spire of a little village they soared, and all the children shouted: "Zeppelin! Zeppelin!" because you see all this happened in modern times, when even the children no longer believe ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... the county gentry had something to do with it. They travelled about too much to be good men. Small though Thrums used to be, it had four kirks in all before the Disruption, and then another, which split into two immediately afterwards. The spire of the parish church, known as the auld kirk, commands a view of the square, from which the entrance to the kirkyard would be visible, if it were not hidden by the town-house. The kirkyard has long been crammed, and is not now in use, but the ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... arch through which we pass as we enter the nave, and perhaps the western wall with the small round-headed windows, we find the earliest records. The slight tower with its sharply-pointed windows and delicate spire was added, probably supplanting an earlier and simple porch, in the time of the Edwards. The arches and northern clerestory of the nave belong to a rather later period when the church was found too narrow for the increasing population; while the arches on the southern ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... the grey city wrapped in its veil of smoke, the tall spire of the old church rising in picturesque isolation above the line of the surrounding buildings. It seemed at that moment to stand as a symbol of the life of the Mother Country, a life fenced in by convention, by forms and ceremonies sanctified to every Englishman by centuries ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... self-content. Its horizontal courses, circular arches, above all, its flat sky-line, seem to have risen enough, and wish to rise no higher. For it has no touch of that unrest of soul which is expressed by the spire, and still more by the compound spire, with its pinnacles, crockets, finials—which are finials only in name; for they do not finish, and are really terminal buds, as it were, longing to open and grow upward, even ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... and coquettishly attired with rows of flowering carnations. Beneath these windows was a shop. Above the whole rose, in beautiful symmetrical lines, a wooden belfry, tapering from a square tower into a delicately modelled spire. To complete and accentuate the note of the picturesque, the superstructure was held in its place by rude modern beams, propping the tower with a naive disregard of decorative embellishment. We knew it at once as the quaint and ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... of the sun sink behind the western crests, and then the last twilight died into the night. Heavy darkness trailed over the forest, but soon moon and stars sprang out, and the sky became silver, the spire of smoke reappearing across its southern face. But Willet, who was in reality the leader of the little party, gave no sign. Grosvenor knew that they were waiting for the majority of St. Luc's force to go to ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler |
