"Firmament" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... glow. The prairie lay in gloomy vastness, lighted but a little way by the waning fire. Along the avenue forms of men and women—mere mites—were running to and fro. The figures were those of gnomes toiling under a gloomy, uncertain firmament, or of animals furtively peeping out of the gloom of dusk in a mountain valley. Helpless shapes doomed to wander on the sandy ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... feelings were unmanly. The moon had risen in unclouded brilliancy, gleaming on the heaving and rippled surface of the dark blue main; I looked up to the tranquil firmament, and the reflection was bitter. Pealing along with the voice of the ocean, the wild and lofty strains from the singular figure aloft, like a gentle brook commingling its waters with a vast and ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various
... light of heaven shining on the path, and has found an immortal hope springing as the natural result of present experience, shall at the last be frustrated of all, and lie down in unconscious sleep, which is nothingness. If that were the end of a Christian life, then 'the pillared firmament were rottenness, and earth's base built on stubble.' No, no! A heaven of endless blessedness and close communion with God is the only possible ending to the facts of the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... escaped. In most Parliamentary frays—especially when the storm rages—there are certain Irish members who are certain to figure largely and eminently; but on these benches there was a silence, ominous to those who are able to note the signs of the Parliamentary firmament. Anyone looking on could have seen that the silence did not come from inattention or want of interest, for the looks betrayed ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... the face of Sextus Was seen among the foes, A yell that rent the firmament From all the town arose. On the house-tops was no woman But spat towards him and hissed, No child but screamed out curses, And shook its ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in fearful mockery where one moment before had stood the proud pinnacle. An enormous mass of rocks fell into the lake below, and the vapors rose in a rival cloud. High in the firmament they curled and twisted, their wreathing forms together telling a ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... treasures of ingots and old coin, lest it should be demanded at their hands for the defence of their country. The profanation and plunder of the monasteries and churches excited the most tragic complaints. The dome of St. Sophia itself, the earthly heaven, the second firmament, the vehicle of the cherubim, the throne of the glory of God, [71] was despoiled of the oblation of ages; and the gold and silver, the pearls and jewels, the vases and sacerdotal ornaments, were most wickedly converted to ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... beer-barrel on skids. His face, that infallible index of the mind, presented a vast expanse, unfurrowed by any of those lines and angles which disfigure the human countenance with what is termed expression. Two small gray eyes twinkled feebly in the midst, like two stars of lesser magnitude in a hazy firmament, and his full-fed cheeks, which seemed to have taken toll of everything that went into his mouth, were curiously mottled and streaked with dusky red, like a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... almightie Jove, in wrathfull mood,[*] To wreake the guilt of mortall sins is bent, Hurles forth his thundring dart with deadly food, 75 Enrold in flames, and smouldring dreriment, Through riven cloudes and molten firmament; The fierce threeforked engin making way Both loftie towres and highest trees hath rent, And all that might his angry passage stay, 80 And shooting in the earth, casts ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... 1602, of Enderby about 1605, of Thornby about 1616, were all accomplished by a lessening of the land under the plough. Moore, writing in 1656, says: 'Surely they may make men as soon believe there is no sun in the firmament as that usually depopulation and decay of tillage will not follow inclosure in our inland countyes.'" (p. 117). Letters from the Council were written in 1630 complaining of "'enclosures and convercons tending as they generallie doe unto depopulation.... ...
— The Enclosures in England - An Economic Reconstruction • Harriett Bradley
... for a period of years, it was instructive as well as ornamental. Three of the bedrooms were on the ground floor and were small apartments. The upstair rooms were much larger, were situated in the roof, and were lit by skylight windows which commanded a limited view of the firmament above but none whatever of the green earth below. These upper rooms were reached by an almost perpendicular staircase surmounted by a trap door, a mode of access convenient enough for the young and active, but not suitable for those of us who had passed their meridian. ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... Jove, and for consent Thundering he shook the firmament; Our umpire Time shall have his way, With Care I let the creature stay: Let business vex him, avarice blind, Let doubt and knowledge rack his mind, 90 Let error act, opinion speak, And want afflict, and ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... dull form of erroneous thinking. They exist very easily in the 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
... desired to see with my own eyes, and hear with mine own ears, this adoration of the Christ, at which my teachers scoff. But I was caught up in a mighty wave of organ-music that surged from this low earth heavenwards to break against the footstool of God in the crystal firmament. And suddenly I knew what my soul was pining for. I knew the meaning of that restless craving that has always devoured me, though I spake not thereof, those strange hauntings, those dim perceptions—in a flash I ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... into the sky, as into an enormous furnace. Gigantic rolling clouds of flame were sweeping before the roaring wind like some vast prairie fire across the firmament. As they passed overhead, the reflection of the lurid light on them was smitten earthwards, and passed with them, making everything it traversed clear as noon—the lion on the swinging sign of the public-house just across the water, the delicate ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... when it began to become dark, we walked on the terrace to enjoy the appearance of the firmament, glittering with ten million stars; to which a slight touch of early frost gave tenfold lustre. As we gazed on this splendid scene, Miss Geddes, I think, was the first to point out to our admiration a shooting or falling star, which, she said, drew a long train after it. Looking to ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... once, for us Those deathless clusters flung, the self-same mind, With all its ancient elements of might, Among us now its ancient glory hides; But, from its smothered power, and buried wealth, A golden future sparkles, decked from deeper founts, A new and lovelier firmament, A thousand realms of song undreamed of now, That shall make Romance a forgotten world, And the young heaven of Antiquity, With all its starry groups, ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... be, and made heaven and earth, and light for to shine, and departed light and darkness, and called light, day, and darkness, night; and so was made eventide and morrowtide one day, that had no morrowtide. The second day He made the firmament between waters, and departed waters that were under the firmament fro the waters that were above the firmament, and called the firmament heaven. The third day He gathered waters that be under the firmament into one place and made the earth unheled, and named the gathering of waters, seas, and ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... on vit briller d'un eclat ephemere Le front tout radieux d'un ministre influent; Mais pour faire palir l'etoile d'Angleterre, Un SOLEIL tout nouveau parut au firmament, Et ce soleil du peuple franc Admire de l'Europe entiere Sur la terre est nomme BONAPARTE ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... to live in Him, whatever else it may mean—and it means a great deal more—is most certainly to live in His love. A man can as soon pass out of the atmosphere in which he breathes as he can pass out of the love of God. We can no more travel beyond that great over-arching firmament of everlasting love which spans all the universe than a star set in the blue heavens can transcend the liquid arch and get beyond its range. 'There is no difference' in the fact that all men, unthankful and evil as they are, are grasped and held in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... sluggard if he chanced to nap. So all night long we watched, until the sun Stood high in heaven, and his blazing beams Smote us. A sudden whirlwind then upraised A cloud of dust that blotted out the sky, And swept the plain, and stripped the woodlands bare, And shook the firmament. We closed our eyes And waited till the heaven-sent plague should pass. At last it ceased, and lo! there stood this maid. A piercing cry she uttered, sad and shrill, As when the mother bird beholds her ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... Europe. Like most of the lesser apartments, it is lined with white Italian marble, and in spite of its enormous dimensions the roof is unsupported by pillars. Ancient flags captured in war decorate the walls, and in the middle of the marble floor is a representation of the firmament inlaid in copper. The Nieuwe Kerk (St Catherine's), in which the sovereigns of Holland are crowned, is a fine Gothic building dating from 1408. Internally it is remarkable for its remains of ancient stained glass, fine carvings and interesting monuments, including one to the famous Admiral ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... was devoted to observation of the heavenly bodies, it is not surprising that they should have mapped out the apparent course of the moon and the visible planets in their nightly tour of the heavens, and that they should have divided the stars of the firmament into more or less arbitrary groups or constellations. That they did so is evidenced by various sculptured representations of constellations corresponding to signs of the zodiac which still ornament the ceilings ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... it dropt the flagstone. One could read That Agathe lay there; but still the girl Lay by him, like a precious and pale pearl, That from the deep sea-waters had been rent— Like a star fallen from the firmament! He hides the grave-tools in an aged porch, To westward of the solitary church; And he hath clasp'd around the melting waist The beautiful, dead girl: his cheek is press'd To hers—Life warming the cold chill ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... SUN.—A photometric experiment of Huygens, resumed by Wollaston, a short time before his death, teaches us that 20,000 stars the same size as Sirius, the most brilliant in the firmament, would need to be agglomerated to shed upon our globe a light equal ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... Light of our firmament, guide of our Nation, Pride of her children, and honored afar, Let the wide beams of thy full constellation Scatter each cloud that would darken a star! Up with our ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... The first commandment: "I am the Lord, thy God," corresponds to the first word at the creation: "Let there be light," for God is the eternal light. The second commandment: "Thou shalt have no strange gods before me," corresponds to the second word: "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters." For God said: "Choose between Me and the idols; between Me, the fountain of living waters, and the idols, the stagnant waters." The third commandment: ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... what the comet meant That rode, blood-red and dire, Across the midnight firmament This year on ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... on a lovely morning at sunrise. The brilliant sun, rising in a flood of light, pierces through the thin haze of morning, converting the countless myriads of dewdrops that hang on tree and bush into sparkling diamonds, and burnishing the motionless flood of water, till a new and mighty firmament is reflected in the wave; as if Nature, rising early from her couch, paused to gaze with admiration on her resplendent image reflected in the depths of her own matchless mirror. The profound stillness, ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... merely in the light of an instrument for raising up members of the state. And surely it may be said of them that they nobly fulfilled this duty. The catalogue of heroes and sages which shine in Grecian history bright and numerous as stars in the firmament, are so many testimonials to the faithfulness of Grecian women in ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... peculiarity, proving that the road to heaven is not independent of the popular will. The great Hall of Justice, an edifice of which the Bivouackers are exceedingly proud, is constructed in the same recumbent style, the architect, with a view to protect himself from the imputation of believing that the firmament was within reach of his hand, having taken the precaution to run up a wooden finger-board from the centre of the building, which points to the place where, according to the notions of all other people, the ridge of the roof ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... he has enabled us to appreciate Vieuxtemps. They will not be compared by the reverent worshipper at the shrine of art. The plant needs the sunshine and the dew. It was pleasant to feel that genius abides in one man and realize that one star differeth from another in glory. Surely the firmament of art is wide enough and yet deep enough to ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... of the 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 ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... sun shone, and the friendly winds blew out of a cloudless heaven; by night the moon ruled a firmament powdered with stars of multitudinous splendor. The conditions inspired Dunham with a restless fertility of invention in Lydia's behalf. He had heard of the game of shuffle-board, that blind and dumb croquet, ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... behind it, you will be as near as I can help you to guessing the exact colour. And, but for a solitary star and the red lamp of a steamer lying off the creek's mouth, this blue covered the whole firmament and ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... exciting the other, and adding not a little to the Babel of tongues. At this state of affairs the ladies took their departure, though not without several gentlemen rushing after them to bring them back. "Are ye after leaving us without a sun in the firmament!" exclaimed one. "The stars are going out, and we shall be in darkness presently," cried another. "A garden without roses is a sorry garden, by my faith!" exclaimed a third. "What shall we do without those beautiful eyes beaming out on us?" shouted a fourth. However, in spite ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... gloom retired from the face of the heavens, the stars looked down gloriously from their sapphire thrones, and a silvery gush played amidst the swaying foliage, where the rain-drops glistened on their leaflet platforms like so many diamonds. Then the lucid milky-way, whose loveliness flushes the firmament, bent itself across the concave above, one broad flame of pure transparent white, as if some burning orb had fled along the sky with so swift a flight, that, for a moment, it had left its lustre in the vault of heaven. Gradually ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... the day wore on, a flood of mellow light suffused the western portion of his chamber. From such vantage ground, Mr. Perrault, of an evening, could observe the movements of the heavenly bodies, the position of the planets and the various phenomena of the firmament; the study of which had great attractions for him, and created in his mind a gratitude to the great architect for all His vast works and beneficent care. On entering the visitor found himself in the reception room, of about twenty-four feet square, with a large bay window ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... formless void between sky and sea. Swollen and angry, the sun lifted up its enormous, ensanguined portent. And the discountenanced moon withdrew hastily into the immeasurable fastnessness of a cloudless firmament, yet failed therein to find complete concealment. Keen, sweet airs of dawn raked the decks, now to port, now to starboard, as the Assyrian twisted and writhed on ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... hypochondriac fancies represent Ships, armies, battles in the firmament; Till steady eyes the exhalations solve, And all to its ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth; and it was so." And it tells us, with regard to the FAUNA, that God said, "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... illumination of the shore of the Bruchium rendered it as bright as day. The huge dome of the Serapeum on the Rhakotis, covered with lamps, towered above the flat roofs of the city like the starry firmament of a smaller world which had descended to earth. Every temple and palace was transformed into a giant candelabrum, and the rows of lamps on the quay stretched like tendrils of light from the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... gay, little seaport town. When it began to sink slowly towards the West a few little fluffy clouds appeared on the horizon, and from a distance, although the sky remained clear and blue, the sea looked quite dark and slaty against the brilliance of the firmament. ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... conscious edges of relations on which such thunders of soul and fate hang, ready to be unleashed at a look. But there is another class of persons, with whom the fire of affection is harmless. Like those weird heat-lightnings that play in the firmament on summer evenings, it retains the lambent warmth and luminous loveliness, without the blasting violence. Of the intellectual and sensual regions, only the former is surcharged; the latter is either exhausted, or separated by an insulation ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... gigantic distinction! A thought that could never be soul to any action, would be more valuable to him than the perception of some vitality of relation demanding the activity of the whole being. He would call thoughts the stars that glorify the firmament of humanity, but the stars of his firmament were merely atmospheric—pretty fancies, external likenesses. That the grandest thing in the world is to be an accepted poet, is the despotic craze of a vast number of the weak-minded and half-made of both sexes. It feeds poetic ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... a field-glass in his hand and shout "balloon!" at the top of his voice. The desired effect—of bringing the whole street out of bed to see the balloon—was easily produced. The star-gazers would thus spend an hour or so minutely examining all the stars in the firmament in their endeavours to select the one that most resembled a balloon. This was not easily done—the stars being much alike to the stupid naked eye—but they would near the point of agreement on the question; and then the confounded night-patrol would come along with his gun, and the observers would ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... hand convulsively, and they both gazed at the firmament, whence the stars seemed to shed gentle poetry ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... described. The walls were incrusted with the most precious gems, so joined together as to form one smooth and perfect surface. The lofty dome appeared to be self-supported, and was studded with gems, lustrous as the stars of the firmament. There was neither wood, nor any other common or base material to be seen throughout the edifice. There were no windows or rather openings to admit the day, yet a radiant light was spread throughout the place, which ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... shall be in eternal restless change Self-fed and self-consumed. If this fail, The pillared firmament is rottenness, &c. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... of each group: 2. Angels—9. Winds (spiritus)—18. Earth—26. Children of men. The classification in the groups is evidently influenced by the 1st chapter of Genesis. In v. 4 the Waters above the firmament (Gen. i. 7) are {80} divided from the Wells, Seas, Floods of vv. 21, 22. The former appear here as Heavenly Powers, the latter as creatures of ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson
... down the rocks at the risk of being himself dashed to pieces; he listened, he groped about, but he heard and saw nothing—the cries had ceased, and the tempest continued to rage. By degrees the wind abated, vast gray clouds rolled towards the west, and the blue firmament appeared studded with bright stars. Soon a red streak became visible in the horizon, the waves whitened, a light played over them, and gilded their foaming crests with gold. ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... has been called, obtains a remarkable support in what would at first seem to militate against it—the existence in our firmament of several thousands of solar systems, in which there are more than one sun. These are called double and triple stars. Some double stars, upon which careful observations have been made, are found to have ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... had always been accepted in the little colony that Harmony was a real musician, a star in their lesser firmament. ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... only, however; the golden flashes vanished one by one; the yellow became orange, the orange deepened into crimson, and the crimson in its turn slowly merged into a cold cobalt blue as the light died out of the western sky; and finally the stars came out one by one until the entire firmament was thickly studded with them. It was ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... coverings taken altogether was the adornment and protection of the tabernacle, that it might be an object of respect. Taken singly, according to some, the curtains denoted the starry heaven, which is adorned with various stars; the curtain (of goats' skin) signified the waters which are above the firmament; the skins dyed red denoted the empyrean heaven, where the angels are; the violet skins, the heaven of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... saw, they say, Immortal Alps look down, Whose bonnets touch the firmament, Whose sandals touch ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... prevailed to bring down the last of the Caesars, yet the ancient frame of 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 condition of a tributary dukedom. Most of the saints ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... born in Chaldaea as early as the time of Abraham. The glories of the firmament were impressed upon the minds of the rude primitive races with an intensity which we do not feel, with all the triumphs of modern science. The Chaldaean shepherds, as they watched their flocks by night, noted the movements of the planets, and gave names to the more ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... his familiar Mazurka, Op. 7, No. 1, and repeated it with quite different nuances. One survivor of this audience remarked subsequently in a letter to a friend: "My emotion was so great I was compelled to retire to recover myself. I have heard all the celebrated stars of the musical firmament, but never has one left such ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... peopled, crowded, thick, studded; galore. thick coming, many more, more than one can tell, a world of; no end of, no end to; cum multis aliis[Lat]; thick as hops, thick as hail; plenty as blackberries; numerous as the stars in the firmament, numerous as the sands on the seashore, numerous as the hairs on the head; and what not, and heaven knows what; endless &c. (infinite) 105. Phr. their name is "legion"; acervatim[Lat]; en foule[Fr]; "many- headed multitude" [Sidney]; "numerous as glittering gems of morning dew" ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... that is done under its mantle. It was a moonlight night— mild Luna shedding a balmy light on 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 exhausted ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... should think more of himself. For the modesty which was once the chief charm of his nature, he is likely to substitute great assumption, and you must remember, mademoiselle, that he who has discovered one world will want to discover two; you will have the whole firmament for rival; in short, could you ever be happy with a man ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... powerful retracting telescope with him, through which he gazed at the starry heavens during the long nights; at the planets with their moons and rings, on which in winter white spots are visible, while in summer a red light surrounds them; and then at that great enigma of the firmament, the moon, which when looked at through the glass appears like a shining ball of lava, with its transparent ridges, its deep craters, bright plains and dark shadows. It is a world of emptiness. Nothing is there except the souls of those who violently separated themselves from their body to get ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... his cap, a gesture which he never failed to execute when he had something particularly important to say, he added humbly and sonorously as he glanced at the grey firmament: ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... love-haunted heart and melancholy. The night had found (to him a night of wo) Upon a mountain crag, young Angelo— Beetling it bends athwart the solemn sky, And scowls on starry worlds that down beneath it lie. Here sate he with his love—his dark eye bent With eagle gaze along the firmament: Now turn'd it upon her—but ever then It trembled to the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... song of gratitude and cheerful prayer Still shall go forth my pretty babes to greet, As on life's firmament, serenely fair, Their little stars arise, with aspects sweet Of mild successive radiance: that small pair, Ellen and Mary, having gone before In this affection's welcome, the dear debt Here shall be paid to gentle Margaret: Be thou indeed ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... minds, 'Where is he who abideth forever?' they lifted up their eyes, and saw, as they thought, beyond sun, and moon, and stars, and all which changes, and will change, the clear blue sky, the boundless firmament of heaven. That never changed, that was always the same. The clouds and storms rolled far below it, and all the bustle of this noisy world; but there the sky was still, as bright and calm as ever. The Almighty Father must be there, unchangeable in the unchangeable heaven; bright, and ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... 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 to ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... perfectly flat on her back in a reasonably comfortable nest of grass and leaves. Staring inquisitively up into the sky she thought she noticed a slight black and blue discoloration towards the west, but more than that, much to her relief, the firmament did not seem to be seriously injured. The earth, she feared had not escaped so easily. Even way off somewhere near the tip of her fingers the ground was as sore—as sore—as could be—under her touch. Impulsively to her dizzy eyes the hot tears ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... black figure in the midst of the two white ones was that of his son Siegfried, reputedly so fond of Debussy. As the group receded and faded, a fragment of a music-hall song floated away from it into the firmament. ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... rose to power supreme, without grave cause for blame? But Harold stood free from the enmities his father had provoked, and pure from the stains that slander or repute cast upon his father's name. The sun of the yesterday had shone through cloud; the sun of the day rose in a clear firmament. Even Tostig recognised the superiority of his brother; and after a strong struggle between baffled rage and covetous ambition, yielded to him, as to a father. He felt that all Godwin's House was centred in Harold alone; and that only from his brother (despite his own daring valour and despite ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... day and blew the firmament, Phebus of gold his stremes doun hath sent To gladen every flour with his warmnesse; He was that time in Geminis, I gesse, But litel fro ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various
... his holy place, Praise him for his mighty firmament, Praise him for his deeds of power, Praise ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... impeachment that the profession of arms has ever been susceptible to the charms of woman. The relation of Mars to Venus is not simply a legend of history, is founded on no mere mythology—their relationship is as sure as the firmament, and their orbits are sometimes ...
— California, Romantic and Resourceful • John F. Davis
... the cave and bed of the ascetic. Here, like the inspired seer of Patmos, he could congratulate himself on having shaken off communion with mankind. Cliffs shattered by the warfare of the elements—a restless and irresistible sea, intersected by perilous reefs—and the blue firmament—were the only visible objects to distract the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... firmament, is not so gret a lord, ne so myghty, ne so riche, as the gret Chane: nought Prestre Johan, that is Emperour of the highe Ynde, ne the Sowdan of Babylone, ne the Emperour of Persye. Alle theise ne ben not in comparisoun ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... which cross the lustrous golden floor like Frauenhofer's lines on the spectrum, began to change and lose themselves. A purple glory of intermingled colors darkened the violet curtains of the sea-chambers, reddening all glints and tinges with an angry fire. Instead of that lustrous, golden firmament, the thallassphere darkened to crimson and opal. The walls grew purple, the floor as red as blood: the deep itself was purpled with the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... admiration had been born, educated, and lifted to the niches prepared for them by popular appreciation, but all far below the place where Patti sat enthroned. Stars of great brilliancy had flashed across the firmament and gone out in darkness, but the refulgence of Patti's art remained undimmed, having only grown mellower and deeper and richer with time. Truth is, Mme. Patti was then, and is still, twenty-five years ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... gods came into being in long succession, but, at length, enmity arose between them and Tiamat, who created monsters to oppose them. Merodach, a solar deity, vanquished Tiamat, cut her body in two, and with one-half of it made a firmament supporting the upper waters in the sky, etc., etc." The Babylonian gods, like even those of the classics, were criminals fit ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... Frances would be with this spot!" said Howard. "It is like the calm, tranquil mirror of her own mind, which seems formed to reflect only the upper world, with its glorious firmament. I think we have before us two excellent prototypes of our wives:—while the clear, peaceful lake represents yours, this happy, joyous, busy little stream may be likened to my Charlotte, who goes on her way rejoicing, and diffusing life ...
— Rich Enough - a tale of the times • Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee
... from the camp they found the whole firmament illuminated. The flames whirled up in long light spires, and the air was filled with sparks and cinders. A bright glare was thrown upon the city, revealing every battlement and tower. Turbaned heads were seen gazing from every roof, ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... willows,—pools which seemed to abound with the finny tribe, for large trout frequently sprang from the water, catching the brilliant fly which skimmed along its deceitful surface. The scene was delightful. The sun was rolling high in the firmament, casting from its orb of fire the most glorious rays, so that the atmosphere was flickering with their splendour, but their fierceness was either warded off by the shadow of the trees or rendered innocuous by the refreshing coolness which rose ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... I lackey'd with the fawning crowd, Scoundrels in office, and would bow To cyphers great in place; but now Upright I stand, as if wise Fate, To compliment a shatter'd state, Had me, like Atlas, hither sent To shoulder up the firmament, 720 And if I stoop'd, with general crack, The heavens would tumble from my back. Time was, when rank and situation Secured the great ones of the nation From all control; satire and law Kept only little ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... I understand him) Mr. Meredith connects man with the Universal, and teaches him to arrive at it and recognise it by strongly reminding him that he is a child of Earth. 'You are amenable,' he says in effect, 'to a law which all the firmament obeys. But in all that firmament you are tied to one planet, which we call Earth. If therefore you would apprehend the law, study your mother, Earth, which also obeys it. Search out her operations; honour your mother as legitimate children, and let your honour ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a summer night Transparent o'er the Neva beamed The firmament in mellow light, And when the watery mirror gleamed No more with pale Diana's rays,(17) We called to mind our youthful days— The days of love and of romance! Then would we muse as in a trance, Impressionable ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... diffus'd o'er all, From which all fortunes, names, and natures fall; Then from those wombs of stars, the Bride's bright eyes, At every glance a constellation flies, And sows the court with stars, and doth prevent In light and power, the all-ey'd firmament: First her eye kindles other ladies' eyes, Then from their beams their jewels' lustres rise; And from their jewels torches do take fire, And all is warmth, and light, ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... dismay; while the other nobles, like adroit courtiers, fixed their looks, with awakening admiration, upon Kaunitz, in whom their experienced eyes were just discovering the rising luminary of a new political firmament. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... by no cloud on the ethereal firmament; and Lois was not quite so conscious as she had been of the beauty around her. The silence lasted a good while; she wondered if her neighbour's thoughts were busy with the lady he had just set down, to such a degree that he forgot to attend to his new companion? Nothing could be more ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... God toiled to mould A nerveless stone to His intent— From peace to war, from heat to cold, It triumphed against the Omnipotent: God strove until His strength grew old, Then cried "Thy help, My firmament!" ...
— Eyes of Youth - A Book of Verse by Padraic Colum, Shane Leslie, A.O. • Various
... stellar firmament there are sometimes two suns which determine the path of one planet, and in certain cases suns of different colours shine around a single planet, now with red light, now with green, and then simultaneously illumine and flood it with motley colours: so we modern men, owing ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... which often leads to a higher appreciation. At last we learned why the Elysian [Footnote: In Arabic El-Lizzat, the Delight, or from the old Egyptian Aahlu,] Fields, the Fortunate Islands, the Garden of the Hesperides—where the sea is no longer navigable, and where Atlas supports the firmament on a mountain conical as a cylinder; the land of evening, of sunset, where Helios sinks into the sea, and where Night bore the guardians of the golden apples—were such favourites with the poets. And we came to love every feature of the place, from the snowy Pike of Teyde flushing ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... intelligent shall shine as with the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... glittering, frosted—a symphony in metals—silver, aluminium, lead—rendered buoyant for the nonce, ethereal—as though the world were really gone Christmas mad, and, having a sudden attack of topsy-turvydom in its inside, had taken to showering its treasures about the firmament, instead of keeping them snugly put away in mines below ground. A sheet of snow, and bitter white rain driving still. A huge building looming black, its many eyes staring into the dark—lidless, bilious, vacant. This is a hospital. Or is it a factory, disguised ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... description of the river scenery is so graphic, that I cannot do better than transcribe it throughout: "The River Hall descends like the slope of a mountain; the ceiling stretches away—away before you, vast and grand as the firmament at midnight." Going on, and gradually ascending and keeping close to the right hand wall, you observe on your left "a steep precipice, over which you can look down by the aid of blazing missiles, upon a broad black sheet ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... primum mobile of our court (Buckingham), by whose motion all the other spheres must move, or else stand still: the bright sun of our firmament, at whose splendour or glooming all our marygolds of the court open or shut. There are in higher spheres as great as he, but none so glorious. But the king is in progress, and we are far from court. Now to hear certainties. ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... maintained them.... If we cherish the virtues and the principles of our fathers, heaven will assist us to carry on the work of human liberty and human happiness. Auspicious omens cheer us. Great examples are before us. Our own firmament now shines brightly upon our paths. Washington is in the upper sky. These other stars have now joined the American constellation; they circle round their center, and the heavens beam with new light. Beneath this illumination let ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... the firmament With living sapphires: Hesperus that led The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon, Rising in clouded majesty, at length Apparent queen unveiled her peerless light, And o'er the dark ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 376, Saturday, June 20, 1829. • Various
... 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 Canon, talking ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... north. At this stage of illumination they are strikingly beautiful in a 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 of concentric ridges, which are ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... centre and source of good—is every where radiant with beauty. From the shell that lies buried in the depths of the ocean, to the twinkling star that floats in the more profound depths of the firmament—through all the forms of material and animated existence, beauty, beauty, beauty prevails! In the floral kingdom, it appears in an infinite variety—in an unstinted and even a richer profusion ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... does not go up without pulling; ascension is my soul's pace and measure, but precipitation my body's. And even angels, whose home is heaven, and who are winged too, yet had a ladder to go to heaven by steps. The sun which goes so many miles in a minute, the stars of the firmament which go so very many more, go not so fast as my body to the earth. In the same instant that I feel the first attempt of the disease, I feel the victory; in the twinkling of an eye I can scarce see; instantly the taste is insipid and fatuous; instantly the appetite is dull and desireless; instantly ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... night as it was—not a breath of wind, and the moon, full orbed, dull and yellow, hangs like a lamp in the dark blue sky. Low down on the horizon are great masses of rain clouds, ragged and angry-looking, and the whole firmament seems to weigh down on the still earth, where everything is burnt and parched, the foliage of the trees hanging limp and heavily, and the grass, yellow and sere, mingling with the hot, white dust of ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... uncertainty of my daily affairs; and I am trying with all my might to put off composition of all sorts until some approach to the certainty of next week's dinner shall remove this remnant of haste, and leave me that repose which ought to fill the artist's firmament ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... To this bold enterprise, as men of might, And valour eminent, and such this day, I trust, will honour you. Let each his spade, And pick-axe, vig'rously, in this hard soil, Where I have laid, the curved line, exert. For now the morning star, bright Lucifer, Peers on the firmament, and soon the day, Flush'd with the golden sun, shall visit us. Then gallant countrymen, should faithless Gage, Pour forth his lean, and half-starv'd myrmidons; We'll make them taste our cartridges, and know, What rugged steel, ...
— The Battle of Bunkers-Hill • Hugh Henry Brackenridge
... come. The doomsday was at hand. The stars of heaven were falling upon the earth like the figs cast by the fig-tree which the wind has shaken. The sun, the great luminary of the universe, had become as sackcloth of hair. The moon was blood-red. The firmament was as a scroll rolled away. The archangel Michael, the prince of the heavenly host, appeared glorious and terrible against the sky. With one foot on the sea and one foot on the land he blew from the arch-angelical trumpet the brazen death of time. The three ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... the deep-flowing Oceanus. There is the land and the city of the Cimmerians, shrouded in mist and cloud, and never does the shining sun look down on them with his rays, neither when he climbs up the starry heavens, nor when again he turns earthward from the firmament, but deadly night is outspread over miserable mortals. Thither we came and ran the ship ashore and took out the sheep; but for our part we held on our way along the stream of Oceanus, till we came to the place which Circe had declared ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... sat content, Her young unlessoned back to a morning gay, To a solemn noon, to a cloudy firmament, And looked upon a world in ...
— A Father of Women - and other poems • Alice Meynell
... was still in the earth's shadow. The firmament—black interstellar space with its blazing white, red and yellow stars—lay spread around us. The moon, with nearly all its disc illumined, hung, a great silver ball, over our bow quarter. Behind it, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... and a braine of inuention for the good of the common-wealth; his place is powerful, while his seruice is faithfull, and his honour due in the desert of his employment. In summe, he is as a fixed planet mong the starres of the firmament, which through the clouds in the ayre, shewes ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... for long intervals; if he would make progress he must learn to understand that the moral world only becomes beautiful when we relinquish our ridiculous standards of what is right and wrong, just as the firmament became a thousand times more wonderful and beautiful when Galileo discovered that the earth moved. Had Kant lived before the astronomer he would have been a great metaphysician, but he would not have written the celebrated passage "Two things ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... a solid dome or roof. This firmament, the sky, was supposed to be the floor of Heaven. The firmament had four corners and rested on the mountains, as the eye could plainly see. When God's car was rolled across the floor we heard thunder, and his movements were always accompanied by lightnings, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... the commercial end of Wonota's improvement. Nor did Ruth overlook the chance the Osage maid had of becoming a money-earning star in the moving picture firmament. But she desired to help the girl to something ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... modern ideas are, indeed, surprising enough. For instance, in talking about the stars and describing their course through the firmament, she makes use of a comparison that is rather startling. She says: "Just as the blood moves in the veins which causes them to vibrate and pulsate, so the stars move in the firmament and send out sparks as it were of light like the ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... certain that the hills decay and that rivers as the dusty years proceed run feebly and lose themselves at last in desert sands; and in its aeons the very firmament grows old. But evil also is perishable and bad men ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... Fraternity, out of old Catholicism, does, it is true, very strangely in the vehicle of a Jean-Jacques Evangel, suddenly plump down out of its cloud-firmament; and from a theorem determine to make itself a practice. But just so do all creeds, intentions, customs, knowledges, thoughts and things, which the French have, suddenly plump down; Catholicism, Classicism, Sentimentalism, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... to 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
... suffering to make you see your false friends in their true character, and then cause you to turn to new friendships with the whole strength of your heroic soul. Sire, I offer you my hand, and, if you will accept it, I will lead you into a career as brilliant as the star-spangled firmament, and as fragrant as the laurels of the south. You shall see at least half the world at your feet. ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... lich to beste he hath fielinge, And lich to Trees he hath growinge; The Stones ben and so is he: Thus of his propre qualite The man, as telleth the clergie, Is as a world in his partie, And whan this litel world mistorneth, The grete world al overtorneth. The Lond, the See, the firmament, Thei axen alle jugement 960 Ayein the man and make him werre: Therwhile himself stant out of herre, The remenant wol noght acorde: And in this wise, as I recorde, The man is cause of alle wo, ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... declares that Christ is "God of God, Light of light." Not only with God, but with His saints is the idea of visible light intimately associated. The prophet Daniel tells us that "They that are learned shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that instruct many unto justice, as stars to all eternity." (XII, 3.) And it is Christ Himself who says: "Then shall the just shine as the sun, in the kingdom of their Father." (Matt., ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... the decades drifted by, and the spectacle of the marvelous child's meteor flight across the war firmament of France and its extinction in the smoke-clouds of the stake receded deeper and deeper into the past and grew ever more strange, and wonderful, and divine, and pathetic, I came to comprehend and recognize her at last for ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... Herzog and his daughter, resounded in the calm starry night. In the villa everything was quiet. Pierre breathed with delight; he instinctively turned his eyes toward the brilliant sky, and in the far-off firmament, the star which he appropriated to himself long ago, and which he had so desperately looked for when he was unhappy, suddenly appeared bright and twinkling. He sighed and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... will, as he hath revealed it, to his Prophets and Apostles? But we learn it, so far as in us lieth, by their teaching, and from the very nature of the world. For the Scripture saith, 'The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his handiwork;' and, 'The invisible things of him from the creation Of the world are clearly understood by the things that are made, even ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... profession of teaching, and who in themselves are great benefactors of the Negro race. The following educators have wrought much in the matter of elevating their race in all the essentials of right-living. The most conspicuous figure just now in the firmament of Negro educators is President Booker T. Washington, who has at his command both the hand and the heart of the American people. The far-reaching influences of his work at Tuskegee, Alabama, where, perhaps, more than 1,300 Negro youths are taught all the useful and honorable methods of labor, are ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... She thought in an almost undefined way of 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 ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... have harnessed the spotted deer to your chariot; the red deer yoked between them, (aids to) drag the car: the firmament listens for your coming, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... solitary thinkings; such as dodge Conception to the very bourne of heaven, Then leave the naked brain: be still the leaven, That spreading in this dull and clodded earth Gives it a touch ethereal—a new birth: Be still a symbol of immensity; A firmament reflected in a sea; 300 An element filling the space between; An unknown—but no more: we humbly screen With uplift hands our foreheads, lowly bending, And giving out a shout most heaven rending, Conjure thee to receive our humble ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... 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 as he thought upon the Creator of these mysterious worlds—and remembered ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... moon hung in a pale-green sky, looking down on a dozen roads each crawling like a black snake with the close press of retreating troops. As I was making my way back to Gradisca the whole firmament leaped into sudden brilliance and every feature in every face among the throngs around me on the road stood out for several seconds under a ghastly light. Then followed from behind Monte Michele, a deep, rolling roar. It was the first of the explosions of ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... effluence from the Creator.[168] According to an Etruscan saga quoted by Suidas, God created the world in six periods of 1,000 years each. In the first, the heavens and the earth; in the second, the firmament; in the third, the seas; in the fourth, the sun, moon, and stars; in the fifth, the beasts of the land, the air, and the sea; in the sixth, man. According to a passage in the Persian Avesta, the supreme Ormazd created the visible world by his word in six periods or ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... all move beautifully; and beautifully do the joyous light-words of the skies dance their eternal cotillion of glory. From the mote that plays its little frolic in the sunbeam, to the world that blazes along the sapphire spaces of the firmament, are visible the ever-varying features of the enrapturing spirit of Beauty. All this great realm of dazzling and bewildering beauty was made by God. What shall we say then, is he not a lover of Beauty? Is it irreverence thus to speak? No; ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... Jonathan Oldstyle essays, showed an indisposition as editor of the Burrite paper to vituperate and lampoon in return, William P. Van Ness, the famous and now historic "Aristides," appeared in the political firmament with the suddenness and brilliancy of a comet that dims the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... of the Aurora Borealis, and we have already had some fine displays during this voyage, but I never witnessed anything like this. Truly the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth His handiwork! Undulating bands of bright white light are swiftly scintillating across the sky, now curving upwards from the horizon, now stretching in broad stripes right over the zenith. Sometimes the Aurora is stationary and the smooth surface ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... piece to support as we went by him, ascending the inclined artillery road, whence we presently came out upon the ramparts, with the vast sweep of star-set firmament above, and below us the city's twinkling lights on one side, and upon the other two great rivers at their ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... shell is the Ocean, Colored with gold from the glow of the morning. Saga is Spring-time, Writ on the green of the fresh springing field, with flowers for letters. Balder, the kingly, is pictured there, throned on the sun at midsummer, Which pours from the firmament riches untold,— personified goodness; For lights are the good, radiant, resplendent, but the evil are darkness. Constantly rising the sun groweth weary; the good also falter, Giddy with walking precipitous heights; sighing they downward Sink to the land of the shades,—down to ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... that other, when Parmenio came to him in the plain of Arbela and showed him the innumerable multitude of his enemies, specially as they appeared by the infinite number of lights as it had been a new firmament of stars, and thereupon advised him to assail them by night; whereupon he answered, "That he would not ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... to save himself.-However, she took the incident not only without displeasure but with apparent satisfaction, saying she was very glad to renew her acquaintance with him. She had not seen him since the time of his spouting, "The spacious firmament on high"—"Ye shepherds so cheerful and gay," etc.,—all of which she remembers hearing. Ah—I have never recollected till this instant that I ought to have gone to her the next day !-how shocking!—and now that I have the consciousness, I can do nothing, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... and mighty arcs of fire spanning the whole heavens, and gripping them as with the glittering jewelled hand of some monstrous keeper of the skies whose mutterings came to us below. Or the scene changed again, and it was as though elves of the zenith had brought their golden caskets above the firmament, and there had burst them open, so that all the jewels of the light rained upon sea and land, and burnt each other with their own beauty as they fell; and the earth answered them back with her shining face. One of the supreme moments of life, truly, to bathe in this shower of multi-coloured ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... upward into the deep arch of the firmament and had lifted his hands to pray, a cloud, though no wind was stirring, hurried across the zenith and hid the brightening stars. The blue sky was still visible, except directly overhead, where this black mass of cloud was sweeping swiftly northward. Aloft ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... none of these, but desire only to satisfy that exalted yet mysterious feeling which lurks in everyone's breast, becoming manifest when the greatest works of the firmament are beheld, then by all means visit this the "Evergreen State" and drink in the glories which no book, howe'er so well written, and no picture, whoe'er the artist, can portray with any degree of fullness ...
— The Beauties of the State of Washington - A Book for Tourists • Harry F. Giles
... rose With rallying shout through the starred firmament, And with a mighty war-cry both the hosts Encountering closed. Nor longer then did Jove Curb down his force, but sudden in his soul There grew dilated strength, and it was filled With his omnipotence; his whole of might Broke from him, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... in every other direction; the white wilds of the desert are now scarcely visible under the black vault of the firmament. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... wholly attentive to the service of his mistress, and his dexterity, experience, and merit therein challenged a room in the Queen's favour which eclipsed the other's over-seeming greatness, and made it appear that there were others steered and stood at the helm besides himself, and more stars in the firmament of ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... Indian commentators and comparative mythologists agree that he is a solar deity. His chief exploit is that he took (or perhaps in the earlier version habitually takes) three strides. This was originally a description of the sun's progress across the firmament but grew into a myth which relates that when the earth was conquered by demons, Vishnu became incarnate as a dwarf and induced the demon king to promise him as much space as he could measure in three steps. Then, appearing in his true form, he strode across earth ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... forced by his own friends into that cry, is, I fear, still possible. Kentucky, at any rate, did not secede in bulk. She still sent her Senators to Congress. and allowed herself to be reckoned among the stars in the American firmament. But she could not escape the presence of the war. Did she remain loyal, or did she secede, that was equally ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... bodies from the firmament, and set a miraculous rainbow there, and under its arch was enacted for the swineherd and the servant girl such a betrothal masque of fantasies and illusions as gave full scope to the art of Miramon, ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... slant just over one's head to break in the enemy's trenches seventy-five feet away. A swift rafale of some fifty "seventy-five" shells passed whistling like the great wind of the Apocalypse, which is to blow when the firmament collapses. Looking through the rifle slit, after the rafale was over, I could see puffs of smoke apparently rising out of the carpet of dead leaves. The nervous man, the other sentry, held up his finger for us not to make the ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... red lightning ripped open the black wardrobe of the firmament, and he saw the salted sea driven by the fury of the hurricane into great billows of foam. Sinking back upon his pillows his last words were: "Thank God, I have been a lighthouse builder, and though the light of my life is fast fading, the beams of my lighthouse are ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... subduer of hostile cities, with the permission of Drona, advanced for the combat. On the other side, Karna, having been embraced by Duryodhana with his brothers, taking up his bow and arrows, stood ready for the fight. Then the firmament became enveloped in clouds emitting flashes of lightning, and the coloured bow of Indra appeared shedding its effulgent rays. And the clouds seemed to laugh on account of the rows of white cranes that were then on the wing. And seeing Indra thus viewing the arena from affection ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... guard marched up soon after, and he shouldered his rifle and fell. He arrived at the place which had been so fatal to his comrades, and bidding his fellow soldiers "good night," assumed the duties of his post. The night was dark, thick clouds overspread the firmament, and hardly a star could be seen by the sentinel as he paced his lonely walk. All was silent except the gradually retreating footsteps of the guard; he marched onwards, then stopped and listened till he thought he heard the joyful sound of ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... persistence of her fancy even in her forlornest hours. Ada or Addie was too common for the last of the Clarks. She should at least have something poetic for name. For who could say? She might some day become an heiress and shine in that social firmament so much desired by her mother. In that event she should not be handicapped by a vulgar name. As Addie had resumed her maiden name after Scarp had been sent to prison, the little girl was destined to grow up as Adelle Clark,—the last member of the Alton branch of the Clarks, ultimate heiress to ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick |
