"Opal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and all; the play of Hamlet is more than Hamlet himself, the poem even here is too great to be resumed in the person. But Constance is the jewel of King John, and Katherine is the crowning blossom of King Henry VIII.—a funeral flower as of "marigolds on death-beds blowing," an opal of as pure water as "tears of perfect moan," with fitful fire at its heart, ominous of evil and sorrow, set in a mourning band of jet on the forefront of the poem, that the brow so circled may, "like to a title-leaf, foretell the nature of a tragic ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... pigeon preened his opal breast; And o'er the meads the bobolink, With vexed perplexity confessed His tinkling gutturals in a kink, Or giggled ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... of Yellowstone National Park and of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, and of Alaska. Yellowstone Park is perhaps the only region where one can see innumerable geysers shooting high into the air, performing year after year with clockwork regularity. Its opal and sapphire pools and hot sulphurous springs, its bears and wild creatures, remind one that here Nature left a specimen of her earliest creation. Motoring along the roads of Wyoming to the "Devil's Paint Pot" of hot bubbling mud, with gurgling springs, vaporous fountains, and spouting geysers in ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... days there was still fine bright weather, hot toward noon, when one might fancy that all was as it had been: the harvest still unreaped, the changeless setting of spruces and firs, and ever the same sunsets of gray and opal, opal and gold, and skies of misty blue above the same dark woodland. But in the mornings the grass was sometimes white with rime, and swiftly followed the earliest dry frosts which killed and blackened ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... of great illuminations Of dreamy doctrine caught from poets of old, Because of delicate imaginations, Because I am proud, or subtle, or merely cold. Natheless my soul's bright passions interchange As the red flames in opal drowse and speak: In beautiful twilight paths the elusive strange Phantoms of personality I seek. If better than the last embraces I Love the lit riddles of the eyes, the faint Appeal of merely courteous fingers,—why, Though 'tis a quest of souls, and I acquaint My heart with spiritual ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... with red wax, and when she removed the enveloping pasteboard, she found a heavy gold ring, bearing a large beautifully tinted opal, surrounded with small diamonds. On the inside was engraved "Douglass and Regina," with the date of the day on which he had left ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... blackness came two white eyes, milky, opalescent, small, far away,—awful eyes, like a dead dream. More beautiful than I can describe, the flakes of white flame moving from the perimeter inward, disappearing in the centre, like a never ending flow of opal water into a circular tunnel. I could not have moved my eyes had I possessed the power: they devoured the fearful, beautiful things that grew slowly, slowly larger, fixed on me, advancing, growing more beautiful, the white flakes of light sweeping more swiftly into the blazing vortices, the ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... reindeer's marrow, a justly celebrated Lapland delicacy, and we set out with a splendidly clear sky and a cold of 12 deg. below zero. The Muonio valley was superb, towards sunrise, with a pale, creamy, saffron light on the snow, the forests on the tops of the hills burning like jagged masses of rough opal, and the distant range of Palastyntre bathed in pink light, with pure sapphire shadows on its northern slopes. These Arctic illuminations are transcendent; nothing can equal them, and neither pen nor pencil can describe them. We passed through Muonioniska, and kept up the Russian side, ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... is a cloud-picture in the stream now whose hues are as manifold as those in an opal and as delicate as the tintings of a sea-shell. But now a muskrat is swimming through it and obliterating it with the turmoil of wavelets he casts abroad from ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... with the other he still held the tiller, he stood up scanning the surface of the waters. I watched him, resolved that it would not be me who spoke first. After a while he appeared to find what he was looking for, for he said, 'Nearly there.' I could see nothing to break the whole pale opal stretch of sunrise-flushing sea but a small black speck which I took to be a buoy, and the faint echo of its bell was borne to me through the clear air. He sat down again beside the tiller, and we sailed on in the same silence, ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... hardest of life's battlefields; and George Herbert, courtier, poet, and saint. "Often in that nameless discouragement," wrote Miss Hopkins, as she lay slowly dying, "before unfinished tasks, unfulfilled aims and broken efforts, I have thought of how the creative Word has fashioned the opal, made it of the same stuff as desert sands, mere silica—not a crystallised stone like the diamond, but rather a stone with a broken heart, traversed by hundreds of small fissures which let in the air, the breath, as the Spirit is called in the Greek of our ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... another of Nature's wonders, a petrified forest, quite unique in that the exposed tree trunks are solid masses of agate, chalcedony, jasper, opal and other silicate crystals, the variety of whose colouring, with their natural brilliancy, makes a wonderfully beautiful combination. These trees are supposed to have been the Norfolk Island pine, a tree now extinct, are of large dimensions, all prostrate, lying in no particular ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... this eternal height Of sunless suns and reigning sin,— Flame-decked this plain of warring kings Where poisoned fumes and beacons burn! And thro' the hyoids, huge and red, Past portals black and guidons bright To onyx lees and opal sands, The Cyclopean vaults of dwale, And cavern'd shapes that Typhon bled, Greet each wand'ring spectre's sight; Where pixies dance on wind-blown strands, Lurke gyte incubi in a hall. Here, then, reigns gyving, batter'd Doom! Where shadows vague and coffined light, Spit broths from ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... was altered; everything was altered. He remembered the ecstasy of their excursion to Switzerland. He remembered the rapture with which, on their honeymoon, he had clasped a new opal bracelet on her exciting arm. He could not possibly have such sensations now. What was the meaning of life? Was life worth living? The fact was—he was growing old. Useless to pretend to himself that it was not so. Both he and she were growing old. Only, she seemed to be placidly ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... sea of emerald and opal, Down a dazzling gulf of dreams I sank and sank away, Wound about with twenty thousand yards of silken rope, all Shimmering into crimson, glimmering into grey, Drowsing, waking, living, dying, just as you regards it, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... apartment of Bobby Vallis—her full name was Roberta. There were soft lights and low divans and the strumming of a painted ukulele that sang its little twisted soul out under the caress of Penelope's white fingers. I can still see the big black opal in its quaint setting that had replaced her wedding ring and the yellow serpent of pliant gold coiled on her thumb with two bright rubies for its eyes. Penelope Wells! How little we realized what sinister forces were playing about her that pleasant evening as we smoked and jested ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... clear azure of the sky above a rosy sunset. But presently he passed his hand over his eyes, as if to shut out some bright vision, and to turn his mind to more sober thought; and, at that moment, the stone in his ring gleamed a pale opal, threaded with ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... Cordis drew from her delicate finger a ring of twisted gold, in which was set an opal wrought into the shape of a heart, and in it palpitated, like throbbing blood, one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... and her accomplished guides, laid up a store of precious souvenirs as they visited the celebrated spots that lie like a necklace of pearls around the lovely lake, with Mont Blanc as the splendid opal that fitly clasps the chain. Calvin and Geneva, Voltaire and Ferney, De Stael and Coppet, Gibbon's garden at Lausanne, Byron's Prisoner at Chillon, Rousseau's chestnut grove at Clarens, and all the legends, ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... colourists is seen most intelligibly in their work in glass or in enamel; secondly, that Nature herself produces all her loveliest colours in some kind of solid or liquid glass or crystal. The rainbow is painted on a shower of melted glass, and the colours of the opal are produced in vitreous flint mixed with water; the green and blue, and golden or amber brown of flowing water is in surface glassy, and in motion "splendidior vitro." And the loveliest colours ever granted to human sight—those of morning ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... man who had set himself up to be the holy terror of a country-side and put his heel on the necks of all the tribes for miles around, would have made use at least of the caves and tombs to strengthen his position. There were thousands of them all among those opal-colored cliffs, to say nothing of ruined buildings; yet not one was occupied. Ayisha had told most of the truth when she said in El-Kalil that her ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... was the discovery of the maid, who alone, of all the maids on earth, could make him happy by her love. He was to roam around the world till he should meet a beautiful woman, wearing on her bosom a jewel in the shape of a heart; whether of pearl, or ruby, or emerald, or carbuncle, or a changeful opal, or perhaps a priceless diamond, Ralph Cranfield little cared, so long as it were a heart of one peculiar shape. On encountering this lovely stranger, he was bound to address her thus: "Maiden, I have brought you a heavy heart. May I rest its weight on you?" And if she were his fated bride,—if ...
— The Threefold Destiny (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... uttered inwardly. She saw Seraphitus standing erect, lightly swathed in an opal-tinted mist that disappeared at a little distance from the body, which seemed ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... Harrie, out on a rock in the opal surf,—a little scarlet mermaid, combing her hair with her thin fingers, from which the water almost washed the wedding ring. It was—who knew how long, since the pretty bathing-suit had been taken down from ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... grow in a cold green sky, straight to the north of us, and then waver and deepen until they reached the very zenith, where they hung, swaying curtains of fire. No wonder the redskins call that wild pageantry of color the ghost-dance of their gods. Even as we watched them, opal and gold and rose and orange and green, we could see them come wheeling down on our little world like an army of angels with incandescent swords. It made one imagine that the very heavens were aflame, going up in quivering veils of white and ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... capsules (the substance of which is tough, semi-transparent, gelatine, opal-tinted, soon to be sea-stained a yellowish green) is slowly expelled from the parent's body—I have been witness to the birth—each contains about one-sixth ounce of vital element, fluid and glistening. Physical changes in this protoplasm manifest themselves ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... Montreal Company's copper mine. The traveler has now fairly entered the vast mineral region of Lake Superior, and passes along a coast hundreds of miles in extent, "abounding in geological phenomena, varied mineral wealth, agates, cornelian, jasper, opal, and other precious stones, with its rivers, bays, estuaries, islands, presque isles, peninsulas, capes, pictured rocks, transparent waters, leaping cascades, and bold highlands, lined with pure veins of quartz, ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... self-exciting, to rapid wrath his heart doth spur, he rushes, he roars, he bursts through the brake with heedless tread. But when he gained the humid verge of the foam-flecked shore, and spied the womanish Attis near the opal sea, he made a bound: the witless wretch fled into the wild wold: there throughout the space of her whole life a bondsmaid did she stay. Great Goddess, Goddess Cybebe, Goddess Dame of Dindymus, far from my home may all thine anger ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... travellers, and cling to the keels of the ships and go round and round the world; and of the cuttlefish who live in the sides of the cliffs and stretch out their long black arms, and can make night come when they will it. She sang of the nautilus who has a boat of her own that is carved out of an opal and steered with a silken sail; of the happy Mermen who play upon harps and can charm the great Kraken to sleep; of the little children who catch hold of the slippery porpoises and ride laughing upon their backs; of the Mermaids who lie in the white foam and hold out ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... had arrived, and Mary Virginia changed into white, in which she glowed and sparkled like a fire opal. We three dined together, and as she became more and more animated, a pink flush stole into her rather pale cheeks and her eyes deepened and darkened. She was vividly alive. One could see why Mary Virginia was classed as a great beauty, although, strictly speaking, she was no such thing. But she ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... Constantinople's richer tints faded into soft opal hues, and the muezzin called the people to prayer. From a window in a wing of the Embassy furthest from the banqueting hall, and overlooking the city, a woman watched the shifting panorama below. She was more beautiful than any of her neglected ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... by the sea! ah, who would know This damp wild ragamuffin on the strand Who importunes the passers-by to throw Big stones across the opal-shining sand? ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 7, 1914 • Various
... Wildwood Road? There's the whistle of the boat coming round the point at Seal. How it sinks into the silence, fading gradually away. Twilight settles slowly down, all around the wooded shore, and across the opal lake— ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... of the size of doubloons, with loose sleeves and cuffs heavily laced with silver also. His linen was of the most gossamer fineness, the collar thrown slightly back and confined by a single clasp of rubies the size of beans, while below was a frill of cambric ruffles sparkling with opal studs framed in diamonds. The ruffles, too, at his wrist were of the most beautiful point lace, secured by royal brilliants, and he was altogether a dandy of such princely magnificence that the courtiers of the days ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... mysterious, infinitely fine parallel lines, which have the power of reflecting, not merely the blue rays, but the blue, green, purple, and red rays, in the greatest beauty in which they can be seen through any hard material whatsoever. We call it then an opal. ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... 'twas beautiful and hard, Whereto his invis'd properties did tend; The deep-green emerald, in whose fresh regard Weak sights their sickly radiance do amend; The heaven-hued sapphire and the opal blend With objects manifold; each several stone, With wit well blazon'd, smil'd, or made ...
— A Lover's Complaint • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... opal, with its thin wire loop, would go on her ring finger. And she was superstitious. No, there was ill-portent enough, she would not accept this ring ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... the highest order. She could enchain twenty people at once, and keep all their intellects in active exercise. It was with difficulty she did that now; she was thinking so entirely of the golden head, with its opal stars. Then came another stir among the brilliant groups—the entree of a prince, beloved and revered by all who knew him. Leone, with her quick, artistic eye, thought she had never seen a more brilliant picture than this—the magnificent apartment, with its superb pictures, its ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... as the changing opal In varying lustre glows, Her face at every moment New charms ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... rolled back. Here there was light, but no such light as she had ever known; it did not fall from sun or star, but, changeful and radiant, welled upward from that land in a thousand hues, as light might well from a world of opal. In its dazzling, beautiful rays she saw fantastic palaces and pyramids, she saw seas and pure white mountains, she saw plains and new-hued flowers, she saw gulfs and precipices, and pale lakes pregnant with wavering flame. ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... hungry heirs—after so many storms nearing the port; after so many vicissitudes, close to the unchanging home; after so many struggles, resting quietly on the breast of God: "Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace?" Into this opal calmness, as of the liquid light of sunset, all the flaming splendours of the hot day have melted. The music of his songs die away into "peace;" as when some master holds our ears captive with tones so faint that we scarce can tell sound from silence, ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... said Cortes, with a spark in his eyes like the flame in the heart of a black opal. "There is ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... She sailed away so swiftly that he could at first mark nothing but the speed with which the clouds above and the dim earth below went rushing past. Soon he began to see that the sky was very lovely with mottled clouds all about the moon on which she threw faint colours like those of an opal. ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • Elizabeth Lewis and George MacDonald
... the test of value; and that an exquisite work of art, such as a fine intaglio or cameo, or a natural rarity, such as a black pearl, is a possession more distingue than a large brilliant which any one who has money enough can buy as well as yourself. Of all precious stones, the opal is the most lovely and commonplace. No merely ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... too late to help to avert disaster, he must just stand aside in these last weeks of the session and see the shipwreck. An unspeakable bitterness invaded his spirit. The moon was rising when he got outside, one day beyond its full. It seemed like a golden ball in the twilight of opal tints, before it should rise in its silver majesty to supreme command of the night. Nature was in one of her most sensuously divine moods. The ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... as a caress. Opal-tinted clouds with violet shadows sailed above the low hills. In the shade of the fence dandelions had burst into bloom. From a bush near by a song-sparrow flung a note of spring across ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... sunset sea—a goblet thick inlaid With jewels wrought in golden filigree, An opal from some elfin treasury Burning with fire and flashing every shade; While round the dim horizon, wide displayed The clouds pile up their largess tenderly As if to clothe the beauty of the sea In filmy ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones
... and we sauntered about on the flat roof, white as marble in the moonlight. The sky was milk—the desert, honey —far off Cairo with its crowned citadel, pale opal veined with light, and faintly streaked with misty greens and purples; the cultivated land a deep indigo sea. The fantastically built hotel (in its ancient beginnings the palace of a Pasha) was like a closely huddled group of chalets, looked ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... sometimes sauntering along in the lovely summer twilight, now resting on some grassy hedge-row bank, or standing still, looking at the great barges, with their crimson sails, lazily floating down the river, making ripples on the glassy opal surface of the water. They did not talk very much; Ellinor seemed disinclined for the exertion; and her lover was thinking over Mr. Wilkins's behaviour, with some surprise and distaste of the habit so evidently ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... hills, breeze-haunted on the brow; And sandy deserts hung with stinging stars! Half-vanished hangs the moon, with daylight sick, Wan-faced and lost and lonely: daylight fades— Blooms out the pale eternal flower of space, The opal night, whose odours are gray dreams— Core of its petal-cup, the radiant moon! All, all the unnumbered meanings of the earth, Changing with every cloud that passes o'er; All, all, from rocks slow-crumbling in the frost Of Alpine ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... domes of the most fantastic but graceful design seemed to soar into the clear and perfect air. All were bathed in a rosy glow, the source of which was hidden. Spacious walks paved with huge blocks of opal divided the rows of palaces. Along them grew tall and slender trees of a curious and delicate foliage. Birds of Paradise, King Fishers and doves flitted from branch to branch. The broadest of these avenues ended in a sweeping flight of steps of alabaster which led to a vast and perfectly proportioned ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... temptation to raise my eyes level with the sill of the window. So did Uncle Jap's Lily. We both peered in. Uncle Jap was facing Leveson; in his hand he held the long-barrelled six-shooter; in his eyes were tiny pin-point flashes of light such as you see in an opal on a frosty morning. Terror had spread a grim mask upon the other; his complexion was the colour of oatmeal, his pendulous lips were quivering, his huge body seemed of a sudden to be deflated. He might have been an empty gas ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... closely wages races spices ages places faces cases cages stages laces blazes closes roses axes gazes noses rises hateful sizes uses prizes wasteful helpful rival naval needful spiteful final vital cheerful thankful oval opal graceful truthful local legal ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... A flood of sunshine suddenly streamed through the lofty glass roof of the covered way, lighting up all these precious colours, toned and softened by the waves—the iridescent flesh-tints of the shell-fish, the opal of the whiting, the pearly nacre of the mackerel, the ruddy gold of the mullets, the plated skins of the herrings, and massive silver of the salmon. It was as though the jewel-cases of some sea-nymph had been emptied ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... a much higher poetic level is reached. In the first, Guido speaks; in the second, Caponsacchi; the third, that lustrous opal set midway in the "Ring," is Pompilia's narrative. Here the three protagonists live and move before our eyes. The sixth book may be said to be the heart of the whole poem. The extreme intellectual subtlety of Guido's plea stands quite unrivalled in poetic literature. In comparing it, for ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... perfection we took between our teeth from the first, and we will give up our hearts to Angelico without drawback or reservation. His color is, in its sphere and to its purpose, as perfect as human work may be: wrought to radiance beyond that of the ruby and opal, its inartificialness prevents it from arresting the attention it is intended only to direct; were it composed with more science it would become vulgar from the loss of its unconsciousness; if richer, it must have parted with its purity, if deeper, with its joyfulness, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... town an azure sea is flowing, 'Mid long peninsulas of shining sand, From opal unto pearl the moon is growing, Dropped like a shell ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... shirt-front there gleamed not a stud, on his fingers there sparkled not a ring. Enguerrand, on the contrary, was not without pretension in his attire; the broderie in his shirt-front seemed woven by the Queen of the Fairies. His rings of turquoise and opal, his studs and wrist-buttons of pearl and brilliants, must have cost double the rental of Rochebriant, but probably they cost him nothing. He was one of those happy Lotharios to whom Calistas make constant presents. All about him was ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... told us of pastures wide and green, To be sought past the sunset's glow; Of rifts in the ranges by opal lit; And gold 'neath the river's flow. And thirst and hunger were banished words When they spoke of that unknown West; No drought they dreaded, no flood they feared, Where the pelican ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... her in it and saw with gladness her shivering cease. As I buttoned it at her throat I marvelled at the thinness of her, and at the delicacy of her face. In the opal light of the luminous sky her great grey ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... and its pallid disk was slowly flushing to the wakefulness of fiery rose. The sky overhead was livening to turquoise light and here and there along the upper slopes were gossamer dashes of opal and amethyst, but this beauty of unveiling turrets and gold-touched crests was lost on eyes in which dwelt a nightmare from which there ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... what the Taj is than to speculate upon the ideals and motives of its builders, and it should be a brave writer who attempts to describe it. Kipling, who saw the structure first from the window of a train nearing Agra, called it "an opal tinted cloud on the horizon"; and after studying the building at close range he wrote, "Let those who scoff at overmuch enthusiasm look at the Taj and thenceforward be dumb; ... each must view it for himself with ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... out of his trouser pocket his exquisite hand with its long tapering pink nails, a hand which seemed still more exquisite from the snowy whiteness of the cuff, buttoned with a single, big opal, and gave it to his nephew. After a preliminary handshake in the European style, he kissed him thrice after the Russian fashion, that is to say, he touched his cheek three times with his perfumed ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... you so silent, Opal? You haven't said a word to-day that you didn't absolutely have to say. If all American girls are as dreamy as you, I wonder why our English lords are so irresistibly attracted across the water when in ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... to weave my stupid nothings into one of those airy fabrics the value of which depends entirely upon the skillful work, or rather penmanship, which distinguishes it. I have even fancied that if I could steal a feather from the living opal swinging like a jeweled pendulum from the heart of the great tiger-lily which nods its turbaned head so stately within the mosquito-net cage standing upon the little table, my poor lines would gather ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... Dining-room; walls distempered chocolate; gaselier with opal-tinted globes; two cast-iron Cavaliers holding gas-lamps on the mantel-piece. Oil-portrait, enlarged from photograph, of Mrs. TIDMARSH, over side-board; on other walls, engravings—"Belshazzar's Feast," "The Wall of Wailing at Jerusalem," and DORE'S "Christian Martyrs." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 11, 1893 • Various
... before, that the mineral wealth of Austria was so great. Besides the iron and lead mines among the hills of Styria and the quicksilver of Idria, there is no small amount of gold and silver found, and the Carpathian mountains are rich in jasper, opal and lapiz lazuli. The largest opal ever found, was in this collection. It weighs thirty-four ounces and ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... upon the sun Broke from their opal veils, are veiled again, And the last light upon the wolds is done, And silence falls on flock and fields and men; And black upon the night I watch my hill, And the stars shine, and there an owly wing Brushes ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... words were potential jewels which, when once the rays of his mind had played upon them, would be lit with the fire of magic. Words of destiny like blood-hued rubies; words fraught with ominous opal warning; words that glittered with the biting brilliance of diamonds—they were his to link together with thought: he was their master. The necromancy of language ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... eyes again, and turning with her thumb an opal ring on her finger, she began to use the blandishments which had never ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... tried to stop him, Nabob makes no more ado, but lifts his great soft trunk, and rolls Mr Chunder Chow over into the grass, where he lay screeching like a parrot, and chattering like a monkey, rolling his opal eyeballs, and shewing his white teeth with fear, for he expected that Nabob was going to put his foot on him, and crush him to death, as is the nature of those great beasts. But not he: he only lays his trunk gently on Harry's shoulder, ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... sunflecked, warm, dry shade. Nowhere is there a hint of that sinister suggestion of the Reach. Clear, beautiful, limpid, wide-spreading, irregular pools, set in an undulating field of emerald-green mossy surf, shaded with graceful foliage and gleaming in the sunlight with exquisite opal tints—a giant necklace of opals, set in links of emerald green, and thrown down at hazard to fall in loops and curves ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... into the side of the ship, affording ample illumination during the daytime, while the hours of darkness were provided for by half a dozen electric lights disposed about the cabin, mounted on handsome aethereum brackets, and furnished with opal shades, shaped and tinted to represent flowers. The bulkheads were of frosted aethereum, divided up into panels by fluted Corinthian pilasters of the same metal, supporting a massive cornice and a coved ceiling, the wall panels being ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Merlin, though you do not love me, save, Yet save me!' clung to him and hugged him close; And called him dear protector in her fright, Nor yet forgot her practice in her fright, But wrought upon his mood and hugged him close. The pale blood of the wizard at her touch Took gayer colours, like an opal warmed. She blamed herself for telling hearsay tales: She shook from fear, and for her fault she wept Of petulancy; she called him lord and liege, Her seer, her bard, her silver star of eve, Her God, her Merlin, the one passionate love Of her whole life; and ever overhead ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... The like also is certain of all sensible ideas peculiar to each sense; for whatever of each kind is present in any subject, excludes all other of that sort: v.g. no one subject can have two smells or two colours at the same time. To this, perhaps will be said, Has not an opal, or the infusion of LIGNUM NEPHRITICUM, two colours at the same time? To which I answer, that these bodies, to eyes differently, placed, may at the same time afford different colours: but I take liberty also to say, ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... as to show gleams and gaps of a wonderful lemon or pale yellow. He had several chains round his neck, and his plumes, which were of several tints of bronze and gold, hung down to the great gold hilt of his long sword. He was drinking a dose of sal-volatile, and admiring its opal tint. The King advanced with a slight mystification towards the tall figure, whose face was in ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... pure turquoise; the windows were made of precious stones brilliantly polished. At the sumptuous feasts of the prince of the land, enchanting slaves served the most delicate dainties on golden dishes. There were mountains of opal rising above valleys reveling in jewels, with crystal streams, whose bottom consisted of ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... with whom I had hunted for silver in the desolate backblocks of New South Wales; men with whom I had scoured the interior of West Australia seeking for gold; men who had been with me on the tin fields and opal fields. I had never doubted that they would keep their country's name unsullied when they met the foe on the field of war, yet when I heard the tale the enemy told I felt my eyes fill as they have seldom filled ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... them angelic, and their faces are transfigured by the light that shines within. And their attenuated bodies show clearly the burning lamp of holiness and faith, as a light shines soft and clear through the opal shades of porcelain or Sevres. And the little maidens always say, "Tank you, Fader," when they receive their penance; and the boys say, "All right." I sometimes expect to hear "old fellow" added. Then the old ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... graveyard element. The ladder we all had to walk under, the peacock's feathers, the black cat, the spilling of salt, breaking of mirrors, presenting of knives, wearing of green ties (not that I wore one—the colour doesn't suit my complexion) or opal rings, are fair fun, and I think that in future it would be as well to limit the satire to these ceremonies, to the exclusion of the funereal part of the business. For badges each wore in his button-hole a small coffin to which dangled a skeleton, and peacock's feathers. In my opinion ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... raced us, as if, even to them, their native element had become hateful, or as if they sensed something ominous and fearsome abroad from which they sought shelter in our company. One slender little opal-hued diaphanous-winged bird-fish came aboard, and before he was picked up had the happy life grilled out of him on our scorching iron deck, hot almost as boiler plates. Poor little chap! he found with us anything but sanctuary; but perhaps he lived ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... the waterfall's thunder burst on their ears from close at hand. They emerged into fresh wet air and a sea of sound, on a rock ledge like the one above. Ismail raised the torch and waved it. The fire and smoke wandered up, until they flattened on a moving opal dome, that prisoned all the noises ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... Fay, intent To do all honor to King Arthur's knight, Smote with his rod the bank on which they leant, And Fairy land flash'd glorious on the sight; Flash'd, through a silvery, soft, translucent mist, The opal shafts and domes of amethyst; Flash'd founts in shells of pearl, which crystal walls And phosphor lights of myriad hues redouble. There, in the blissful subterranean halls, When morning wakes the world of human trouble ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... you would have made in the old butterfly times, of opal and felspar! What lost creatures we all are, we nice ones! The Alps and clouds that I could have done, if ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... skeletons of crocodiles, plesiosauri, planulites, and stems of the cycadeae; in the chalk formations, small polythalmia and bryozoa, whose species still exist in our seas; in tripoli, or polishing slate, in the semi-opal and the farina-like opal or mountain meal, agglomerations of siliceous infusoria, which have been brought to light by the powerful microscope of Ehrenberg;** and, lastly, in transported soils, and in certain caves, the bones of elephants, ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... six on a July morning, and Lake Wissanotti lying in the sun as calm as glass. The opal colours of the morning light are shot from the surface ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... of course, innumerable substances, more or less, capable of talismanic virtue to particular individuals. But those gems, and similar ones, that are given in "The Light of Egypt," Vol. I, are the most powerful. To these may be added the opal, under Scorpio; the garnet, under Aries; and the turquoise, under Cancer, when Saturn is therein; and the aquamarine, under Pisces; and among the temporary talismans of vegetation we may add that, the young shoots, bearing the flower and seed vessels, are ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... beautiful scene burst upon her vision! The eastern horizon was ablaze with glory. Lovely morning clouds, soft, transparent white, tinted with rose, violet and gold, tempered the dazzling splendor of the rising sun, and half vailed the opal-hued mountain tops, and even hung upon the emerald mountain side. Morning sky, rosy clouds, and opal mountains, were all reflected as by a mirror in the clear water ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... a dancer, had been on the barge when it was attacked, because he was a lover of ice-cream. He too had been lined up and robbed. He had been robbed not only of forty perfectly good cents, but his pirate had seen his opal scarf-pin and had rudely taken it from Mr. Gubb's tie. The pirate was, Mr. Gubb noticed, a short, heavy man with greasy hands. As the motor-boat dashed away, Mr. Gubb pressed to the rear of the barge and ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... O high, from the opal sky, Shouting against the dark, "Why, why, why, must the day go by?" Fell ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... heavy with the gold of love, rich with the purples of passion, aflame with the crimson of thy desire, forgetting not the caress of the rose, nor the light mingling of opal and saffron, and the faint touch of amethyst and topaz, in which shall ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... Still the hunter lay quiet. From time to time the calf struggled and bellowed. Lank, gray wolves appeared on all sides; they prowled about with hungry howls, and shoved black-tipped noses through the grass. The sun sank, and the sky paled to opal blue. A star shone out, then another, and another. Over the prairie slanted the first dark shadow ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... the badge; instead of which they wore sapphires curiously cut, hanging from their necks by a golden chain. The courtiers wore brownish cloaks, wrought with flowers encompassing young eagles; their tunics were of an opal-colored silk, so were also their lower ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... the sea. Lancing College, some miles distant, stood lonely as a lighthouse, and beneath it the Ada flowed white and sluggish through the marshes, the long spine of the skeleton bridge was black, and there, by that low shore, the sea was full of mist, and sea and shore and sky were lost in opal and grey. Old Shoreham, with its air of commerce, of stagnant commerce, stood by the sea. The tide was out, the sea gates were dry, only a few pools flashed silver amid the ooze; and the masts of the tall vessels,—tall vessels aground in that strange ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... which a solitary log came floating, black and conspicuous; in one place a long, slanting mark lay sparkling upon the water; in another the surface was broken by boiling, tumbling rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal; where the ruddy flush was faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful circles and radiating lines, ever so delicately traced; the shore on our left was densely wooded, and the somber shadow that fell from this forest was broken in one ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... evening when, riding wearily on jaded horses, they came to the outskirts of Angers, and saw before them the term of their journey. The glow of sunset had faded, but the sky was still warm with the last hues of day; and against its opal light the huge mass of the Angevin castle, which even in sunshine rises dark and forbidding above the Mayenne, stood up black and sharply defined. Below it, on both banks of the river, the towers and spires of the city soared up from a sombre huddle of ridge-roofs, ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... crystal, of topaz and of opal; but those whose lens is a great polished diamond are more powerful, and permit them to see ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... the hillocks. Based upon a soft white sandstone, a bed of clay formed the lowest part of the cliff; upon this bed of clay, a bed of chalk reposed; this chalk was superseded by a thick bed of saponaceous earth, whilst the summit of the cliff was composed of a bright red sand. Semi-opal and hydrate of silex were found in the chalk, and some beautiful specimens of brown menelite were collected from the upper stratum of ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... opal islands; jade continents; sapphire seas of strange sunsets; mysterious masses of brown-skinned humanity; brown-eyed, full-breasted, full-lipped and full-hipped women; which we call the Orient, can only be caught by the photographer's art in ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... and there was the golden gleam of broom; yonder over a spur of whitish rock sprawled the green and living scarlet of a cactus. Below him about the caves of Hercules was a space of sea whose clear depths shifted with its slow movement from the deep green of emerald to all the colours of the opal. A little farther off behind a projecting screen of rock that formed a little haven two enormous masted galleys, each of fifty oars, and a smaller galliot of thirty rode gently on the slight heave of the water, ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... nickel, reddish to brownish-red, yellow to reddish-yellow or colourless on cooling, unaltered in the reducing flame; bismuth, yellowish-brown, light-yellow or colourless on cooling; in the reducing flame, almost colourless, blackish-grey when cold; silver, light yellowish to opal, somewhat opaque when cold; whitish-grey in the reducing flame; manganese, amethyst red, colourless in the reducing flame. If the hot bead is colourless and remains clear on cooling, we may suspect ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... lips moved as if in prayer. He smiled; he laughed; he chuckled. The sun sank lower and finally went out of sight. The sky along the horizon was an ocean of pink and purple, with shores of shimmering opal. ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... the poet may only have meant the same thing, though the expression in that case would be somewhat strained. To us, Pliny's description appears to clearly point to some opaline substance; the precious opal has never in modern times been found in masses approaching to the size necessary to make vessels such as we have spoken of. The question is not likely to be settled, and it is not improbable that the material ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... which, seen from my windows, gleamed smooth and glistening as white marble, or, again, in expectation of a gay stroll through the crisp, clean snow which draped the fields with its downy folds and reflected the morning light in opal tints like the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... don't want any cliques," said Merle quickly. "We had enough of that sort of thing when Opal was there. Miss Pollard told mother that the new mistress, Miss Mitchell, is going to reorganise everything, and bring it up to date, so I expect we shall find a great many changes when we start again. Have you been ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... flowers and fruits that you read of in Westward Ho! and Fair Play were growing in rich profusion. Between the green, green slope and the blue, blue sea lay a stretch of sand that looked like a carpet of jewelled cloth of gold, for it was not greyish as our northern sand is, but yellow and changing—opal-coloured like sunshine and rainbows. And at the very moment when the wild, whirling, blinding, deafening, tumbling upside-downness of the carpet-moving stopped, the children had the happiness of seeing three large live turtles waddle down to the edge of the sea and ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... come with them, and gazing ever more intently towards the island they saw rising upwards the pure white snow-like bird—upwards and upwards, ever higher, till at last, with the sound of its own joyous song, it faded and melted into the opal radiance ...
— The Tapestry Room - A Child's Romance • Mrs. Molesworth
... afternoon, a veil of blue spiritualized without dimming the outlines of that most glorious range, making it look like the dreamed-of mountains of "the land which is very far off," till at sunset it stood out sharp in glories of violet and opal, and the whole horizon up to a great height was suffused with the deep rose and pure orange of the afterglow. It seemed all dream-like as we passed through the sunlit solitude, on the right the prairie waves lessening towards the far horizon, while on the left they ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird |
