"Spire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a frozen dream. There will be time enough to trace out the analogy while waiting the summons to breakfast. Seen through the clear portion of the glass, where the silvery mountain peaks of the frost scenery do not ascend, the most conspicuous object is the steeple, the white spire of which directs you to the wintry luster of the firmament. You may almost distinguish the figures on the clock that has just tolled the hour. Such a frosty sky, and the snow-covered roofs, and the long vista of the frozen ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... a couple of days, the school was twisted round and removed to the far corner of the lot. Then the foundations were dug for the new church. It was decided that it should be a brick building, with a spire, to cost about 1500 dollars. Mr. Jacobs, my assistant, busied himself in the matter, and together we managed to raise the requisite funds; and early in the spring building operations ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... miles from Scott's Bluff stands old Chimney Rock. It is a curious freak of nature, and a famous landmark on the trail. It covers perhaps twelve acres, and rises coneshaped for two hundred feet to the base of the spire-like rock, the "chimney," that rests upon it and rises a full hundred ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... ships coming home with laughter, ships leaving home with sad sea-gull cries of farewell. And the shaggy tossing water shall be bounded on either bank with high granite walls, and on one bank shall be a fretted spire soaring with a jangle of bells, from amid a tangle of masts, and underneath the bells and the masts shall go streets rising up from the strand, streets full of faces, and sweet with the smell of tar and ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... and a few gaslamps. On the right was a Gothic building, which would have been sufficiently handsome if built in stone, but with barbarous taste had been executed in wood. At the end of the garden some more steps led to a broad, four-cornered courtyard, on the right of which the iron spire of the National Memorial was dimly visible, while to the left was a large building of red and yellow brick with a four-square tower at either end, a pavilion projecting from the center, and a number of large windows. Over ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... their power." There is the unconscious expression of one of the great minds of the world. Bacon was like one of the architects of the Middle Ages, who drew his plans for a mighty cathedral, perfect in every detail from the deep foundation stone to the cross on the highest spire, and who gave over his plans to the builders, knowing that, in his own lifetime, only one tiny chapel would be completed; but knowing also that the very beauty of his plans would appeal to others, and that succeeding ages ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... those barren wastes which always mark the land of slaves—when we see a dense population of freemen—when lovely cottages and improved farms arise upon the now deserted and sterile soil—and where now deep silence reigns, we hear the chimes of religion from the village spire;—will you not—will not every friend of his country, thank this Society for its patriotic labors! Yes! Kings might be proud of the effects which this Society will have produced. Far more glorious than all their conquests would ours be: for it would be the triumph of freedom over slavery—of ...
— The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. • Unknown
... in view of his window sprang upward, grew into a spire, yearning higher until its uppermost tip was half invisible against the morning skies, gave him the first sense of the transiency and unimportance of the campus figures except as holders of the apostolic succession. He liked knowing that Gothic architecture, ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the sun gets up From behind the village spire; And the children dream that the first red gleam Is the ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... enjoy it excessively. Besides, the shower is just over.—What church is that, Monsieur, with the very disproportionate steeple?" inquired Miselle, pointing to a square gray box, surmounted by a ludicrously short and obtuse spire, expressive of a certain dogged ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... strange country. Nine in ten of us had never seen a mountain, nor a hill as high as a church spire, until we had crossed the Ohio River. In power upon the emotions nothing, I think, is comparable to a first sight of mountains. To a member of a plains-tribe, born and reared on the flats of Ohio or Indiana, a mountain region was a perpetual miracle. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... penalty of an innocent walk on its platform,—with its neat carriages, metropolitan hotels, precious old college-dormitories, its vistas of elms and its dishevelled weeping-willows; Hartford, substantial, well-bridged, many—steepled city,—every conical spire an extinguisher of some nineteenth-century heresy; so onward, by and across the broad, shallow Connecticut,—dull red road and dark river woven in like warp and woof by the shuttle of the darting ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... question, and, in addition, a proposition boldly practical in the Kyrie, the spire of your Cathedral. The inspiration and structure of it are certainly admirable..."omnia excelsa tua et fluctus tui super me transierunt." Nevertheless, during these 300 bars, about, of a slow and almost continuous ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... came from an explosion of meteors, a shower of these missiles being then in progress, invisible, of course, in the day-time. Just after the signing of the Declaration of Independence the royal arms on the spire of the Episcopal church at Hampton, Virginia, were struck off by lightning. Shortly before the surrender of Cornwallis a display of northern lights was seen in New England, the rays taking the form of cannon, facing southward. In Connecticut sixty-four of these ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... had greatly changed since Mr. Wharton and his brother-in-law built their cabins in the wilderness. Those cabins were now sheds and kitchens appended to larger and more commodious dwellings. A village had grown up around them. On the spire of a new meeting-house a gilded fish sailed round from north to south, to the great admiration of children in the opposite schoolhouse. The wild-flowers of the prairie were supplanted by luxuriant fields of wheat and rye, forever undulating ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... shadowing spot the sunny fields; And river, now with bushy rocks o'er-brow'd, Now winding bright and full, with naked banks; And seats, and lawns, the Abbey and the wood, And cots, and hamlets, and faint city-spire; 35 The Channel there, the Islands and white sails, Dim coasts, and cloud-like hills, and shoreless Ocean— It seem'd like Omnipresence! God, methought, Had built him there a Temple: the whole World Seem'd imag'd in its vast circumference: 40 No wish ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... entirely rased to the ground. At the period in question though partially unroofed, and with some of the walls destroyed, it was still beautiful and picturesque—more picturesque, indeed than in the days of its pride and splendour. The tower with its lofty crocketed spire was still standing, though the latter was cracked and tottering, and the jackdaws roosted within its windows and belfry. Two ranges of broken columns told of the bygone glories of the aisles; and the beautiful side chapels having escaped injury ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... happy she must be! The Ball-Room, with its painted sky Where heavy angels seem to fly, Is a dull place; its size and gloom Make them prefer, for drawing-room, The Library, all done up new And comfortable, with a view Of Salisbury Spire between the boughs. When she had shown me through the house, (I wish I could have let her know That she herself was half the show; She is so handsome, and so kind!) She fetch'd the children, who had dined; And, taking one in either hand, Show'd me how all the grounds were plann'd. ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... trespass; but those invited there found in this quiet sun-trap many headstones, bearing names and dates and epitaphs. Close by, a path, along which members of the family went often to and fro, led to yet another quiet corner, where a well-known spire showed above the trees. From this last there sounded at intervals the music of bells, chiming, or ringing solemnly, and beneath its shadow slept other folk, who had once walked the world with these same dogs of many generations, earning epitaphs no better, if ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... House and look out over the Common. To our right, near the intersection of Boylston and Tremont Streets, lies the half-forgotten, almost obliterated Central Burying Ground, the final resting-place of Gilbert Stuart, the famous American painter. At the left points the spire of Park Street Church, notable not for its age, for it is only a little over a century old, but for its charming beauty, and by the fact that William Lloyd Garrison delivered his first address here, and here "America" was sung in public for ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... darkness of our country's crime and suffering be lifted. God will roll back the night of storm, and bring in the morning of joy. Its golden light will gild the city spire, and strike the forests of Maine, and tinge the masts of Mobile; and with one end resting upon the Atlantic beach and the other on the Pacific coast, God will spring a great rainbow arch of peace, in token of everlasting covenant that the land shall never ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... sailed by Salisbury spire, calculating that a few minutes' run, at two or three miles a minute, would bring them to their destination on the outskirts of Portsmouth. But a few miles south the baffling mist had made its appearance, and Smith found himself bereft of landmarks, and compelled ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... soaring Finster-Aarhorn, the Todten See (Sea of the Dead), beneath whose waters are buried soldiers who fell in battle there on the Alpine crags. Had I defined all this, I need not have felt uneasy on St. Stephen's spire or the St. Gotthard. We are not necessarily brutal if our feet turn with especial willingness toward battle-fields. There man is most in earnest; his sense of duty perhaps at its best; the sacrifice greatest, ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... Santa Croce, the domes of San Spirito, of the Baptistery, of the Cathedral; sharply defined in the clear atmosphere were the airy, light Campanile of Giotto, the more slender brown tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, the spire of Santa Maria Novella. Northward beyond the city rose the heights of Fiesole, and to the east the green hills dotted all over with white houses, swept away ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... St. Aspais, an elegant church of the 14th cent. surrounded by crocketed gabled chapels. By the side of the main entrance rises a buttressed square tower, terminating in a high peaked roof prolonged into a short spire. In the interior are some delicately sculptured canopy work and 8 windows with valuable old glass. A few yards off the main street is the Hotel de Ville with a round attached turret in each corner; and ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... The cards are dealt, Our frolic games are o'er; I've laughed, and fooled, and loved. I've felt— As I shall feel no more! Yon little thatch is where she lives, Yon spire is where she met me;— I think that if she quite forgives, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... majestic grandeur of this peerless waterway. Wherever the river turns, the entire panorama changes. Stately facades, august cathedrals, amphitheatres, rotundas, castellated walls, and rows of time-stained ruins, surmounted by every form of tower, minaret, dome and spire, have been moulded from the cyclopean masses of rock that form the mighty defile." Who will say, after this, that water is not the grandest of all sculptors, as it cuts through hundreds of miles of rock, forming such magnificent ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... which they had expressed their difference with him: he felt, without knowing it, ashamed of the things he had uttered; they were not such as he would wish proclaimed from the house-tops out of the midst of which rose heavenward the spire of the church he had built; neither did the fact that he would have no man be wicked on Sundays, make him feel quite right in urging young men to their ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... complex, is not to be stumbled upon by chance. You may make two stones lean upright one against the other by chance, but otherwise than by a methodical application of means to the end you could not support the spire ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... and away! where haughty woods Front the liberated floods: We will climb the broad-backed hills, Hear the uproar of their joy; We will mark the leaps and gleams Of the new-delivered streams, And the murmuring rivers of sap Mount in the pipes of the trees, Giddy with day, to the topmost spire, Which for a spike of tender green Bartered its powdery cap; And the colors of joy in the bird, And the love in its carol heard, Frog and lizard in holiday coats, And turtle brave in his golden spots; While cheerful cries of crag and plain Reply to the ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... all the rest into its own bright substance. Here is the stifling smoke, coming up from some newly-lighted fire of green wood, black and choking, and solid in its coils; but as the fire burns up, all the smoke-wreaths will be turned into one flaming spire, full of light and warmth. Do you turn your smoke into fire, your fear into faith. Do not be down-hearted if it takes a while to convert the whole of the lower and baser into the nobler and higher. Faith and fear ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... who, fain to dry the tear, and soothe the choking throat, Would burn those tokens of the hearth that fondly o'er us float; They cannot trace amid the gloom each dainty spire and whorl, But smoke, to the true poet's eye, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Dec. 20, 1890 • Various
... out over the low sill and stood on the leads. The night was soft and cool. The sky, full of the light of a rising moon, shewed beautifully, against its luminous violet, the outlines of dome and minaret and spire, and far out beyond the crowded city's confines, the two incomparable mountains, Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl, the huge volcanoes, shrouded in eternal snow, rising a sheer ten thousand feet from the level plain, standing like ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... last to tire of our ice-olation, and to look forward to the reopening of the Gotha Canal, as a means of escape. Day after day it was a new satisfaction to behold the majestic palace crowning the island-city and looking far and wide over the frozen lakes; the tall, slender spire of the Riddarholm, soaring above the ashes of Charles XII. and Gustavus Adolphus, was always a welcome sight; but we had seen enough of the hideous statues which ornament the public squares, (Charles XII. not ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... speak again, for the jagged ice-peaks were coming rather near. I held my breath as the little plane veered around a slender black spire and dropped toward a tiny scrap of smooth snow among the ice-hummocks. I might have spared my anxiety. Under Ray's consumately skilful piloting, the skids struck the snow with hardly a shock. We glided swiftly over the ice and came to ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... the very centre of the roof, on four tall pillars of pine that were fluted with a gouge, and loaded with mouldings. On the tops of the columns was reared a dome or cupola, resembling in shape an inverted tea-cup without its bottom, from the centre of which projected a spire, or shaft of wood, transfixed with two iron rods, that bore on their ends the letters N. S. E. and W, in the same metal. The whole was surmounted by an imitation of one of the finny tribe, carved in wood by the hands ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... pleasant voyage, for November, we sailed up our beautiful New York harbor just as the sun was rising in all his glory, gilding every hill-top and distant spire in the landscape, and with grateful hearts we celebrated the national Thanksgiving-day once more with loving ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... of the same seal. A church, with central spire, a cross at each gable end, masoned walls imitating ashlar-work, and traceried windows, standing on a ship with a castle at each end, that on the left pointed, that on the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... get the Atom Smasher," said Jim, pointing to the thin spire of violet flame that was still visible in the center of the causeway. "It's our only chance. You must stay here. If I live, I'll ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... the Valley there were pointed out to us the Three Brothers, a triple group of rocks, three thousand eight hundred feet high. Cathedral Spire, Sentinel Rock, Yosemite and Lost Arrow Falls, and all the other points of interest that can be ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... the ardent life that ebbed and flowed across its many bridges. On its breast, the small, dark craft of the city nestled lazily; to right and left along its banks, the sun struck glints of gold and bronze from spire and monument; while, close against its sides, on the very parapet of its quays, there was in progress that quaint book traffic that strikes so intimate a note in the ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... the Forest Shades,' Sweet, from the heights of thy domain, When the grey ev'ning shadow fades, To view the Country's golden grain! To view the gleaming Village Spire Midst distant groves unknown to me; Groves, that grown bright in borrow'd fire, Bow o'er the peopled Vales ...
— Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs • Robert Bloomfield
... living shroud. A cardinal bird flickered its vivid body in and out of the moss with a startling effect; and halfway up on the trunk of the cypress a mocking touch in the somber scene, a blood-red orchid brazenly flaunted its proud beauty. And then, far above the tallest gray, sharp spire of the dead tree, high up in the warm blue heavens, appeared ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... elevated, but small platform above the dining place, looking down upon the great chestnut tree, and indeed upon all our possessions. Thus endeavouring to realize the scenes so often seen in England, where the pretty simple church, with its graceful spire, is seen on an elevated place, while the humble cottages, and rose-covered ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... was soft and still, as we walked up and down the alleys of a beautiful garden that extended quite to the church; the rooks were dreamily cawing, and wheeling in dark, airy circles round the old buttresses and spire. A funeral train had come into the graveyard, and the passing bell was tolling. A thousand undefined emotions struggled in ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... a crown of thorns. The different sides of the Chapelle are in the same style—with buttresses between the windows, gables surmounting these, and a fine open parapet crowning all. The roof is sloping, and the height is over a hundred feet. The spire measures, from the vaulting, seventy feet. We entered by a stair-case the upper chapel, and an exquisite view presented itself. A single apartment, a half-circular chair, with fine, large windows, detached columns with bases and capitals, and ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... itself be a novelty to an American. Our summer cities consist wholly of wooden buildings, but Tenby, from the point of its ponderous pier, where the waves break as on a rock, to the tip of its church-spire, which the clouds kiss, is every inch of stone. Welshmen will not build even so insignificant a structure as a pig-sty out of boards if there are stones to be had. I have seen stone pig-sties in Glamorganshire with walls a foot thick ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... much longer than the head; broad, acutely pointed; nasal apparatus very complicated; the lower leaf very large, concealing the upper lip like a door knocker; the upper leaf like a graduated spire; ears transversely striate; a rather large semi-circular lobe at base of ear; fur long, dense, soft, and lax, slightly curled or woolly black with a silvery grizzle, or greyish-black or ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... down yonder lane, And the little church stands near, The church where we were wed, Mary, I see the spire from here. But the graveyard lies between, Mary, And my step might break your rest— For I've laid you, darling! down to sleep, With your baby ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... town was shelled, and the municipal offices and big buildings in the centre were utterly destroyed, but three buildings stand conspicuously among the ruins. These are two churches, and the Town Hall, with a spire resembling that of a church. The fact that the building next to the latter was leveled utterly, while not a single shell entered the supposed church, indicates that the Russian practice at 5,000 meters was sufficiently accurate to insure the protection ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... began to go soon, and when one was fairly caught its high spire was seen to quiver for a moment as if it were in pain, and then topple right over with a crash. The dangers were increased by the falling of such great masses of stone. The whole of that night the flames roared ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... red-brick synagogue; and just beyond it St. Sophia, the ugly Greek cathedral, yellow, squat, and ponderous; and midway between these two—a thing of beauty—St. Matthew's Church, grey and Gothic, with its slender soaring spire. In Pembridge Square she paused to ask herself if it was not time to turn back. No, not yet, a few steps more would bring her to the old turning—that broad familiar way only as long as the width ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... thoughts, he quitted the near view, and let his eye run along the edge of the horizon, until it rested upon a small speck, which he knew to be the lofty spire of Saint Paul's Cathedral. If, as he supposed, the Fair Geraldine was in attendance upon Anne Boleyn, at the palace at Bridewell, she must be under the shadow of this very spire; and the supposition, whether correct or not, produced ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the city, Burr experienced a thrill of surprise. The prospect surpassed his pre-conceptions. In the subdued glow of the setting sun, he saw all things touched with a visionary splendour. Streets, roofs, belfries, the cathedral spire, and the flag of the Union streaming far away above the fort, appeared objects in an enchanted scene. Were the seven cities of Cibola clustered in ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... galloping, Joris and I, Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky; The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh; 'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff; Till over by Delhem a dome spire sprung white, And "Gallop," gasped Joris, "for ...
— O May I Join the Choir Invisible! - and Other Favorite Poems • George Eliot
... This shewes exlent in you; No pennance shall displease so you absolve me. Bid me to clime some Rock or Pyramide, Upon whose narrow spire you have advanc'd My peace, and I will reach it or else fall, Lost to the world in ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... grey gulls drift across the bay Softly and still as flakes of snow Against the thinning fog. All day I sat and watched them come and go; And now at last the sun was set, Filling the waves with colored fire Till each seemed like a jewelled spire Thrust up from some drowned city. Soon From peak and cliff and minaret The city's lights began to wink, Each like a friendly word. The moon Began to broaden out her shield, Spurting with silver. Straight before The brown hills lay like quiet beasts Stretched out beside a ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... bright as day, and the mystic rays from the realm of Luna, shining on gate, arch, column, spire, tower, temple and dome, revealed to us the ghosts of vanished centuries, and from the depths of the Coliseum there seemed to rise the shouts of a hundred thousand voices, cheering the gladiator from Gaul, who had just ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... at the heart, the realisation was brought to him. This was home, and over yonder, under the shadow of the heaven-pointing spire, a slip of a girl was waiting ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... of that strong fortress, which overlooked the well-contested field of Newbury,—and Chalgrove to the north, where the reaper, as he binds his sheaf, still pauses to tell you the very place where Hampden fell; every spot has a history! Look at a wooden spire, and your companion shakes his head, and says that it has been so ever since the Cavaliers were blown up in the church tower! Ask the history of a crumbling wall, and the answer is pretty sure to be, Cromwell! That his Highness the Lord Protector did leave what an accomplished ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... very calm over the displays of nature; but you will scarce believe how my heart leaped at this. It was like meeting one's wife. I had come home again—home from unsightly deserts to the green and habitable corners of the earth. Every spire of pine along the hilltop, every trouty pool along that mountain river, was more dear to me than a blood relation. Few people have praised God more happily than I did. And thenceforward, down by Blue Canyon, Alta, Dutch Flat, and all the old mining camps, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... church-going bells, Their memory's very dear; And oft in dreams we seem to hear Them ringing loud and clear. Again we see the village-spire Pointing toward the skies; And hear our reverend pastor tell Of life ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... the hill, The village spire, the ivy'd tow'r, The sparkling wheel of yonder mill, The grove, green field, and op'ning flow'r, ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... strange: my childhood knew them. I had seen that golden sign with the dark globe in its curve leaning back on azure, beside an old thorn at the top of an old field, in Old England, in long past days, just as it now leaned back beside a stately spire ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... nor glinting spire Reflected the sunset's fading fire; The wigwam sent up its faint blue smoke, The owlet's shrill cry the stillness broke, While the small rude huts of the settlers stood Within frail ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... fancy cloy, 15 Though every passing zephyr whispers joy; Brisk toil, alternating with ready ease, Feeds the clear current of his sympathies. [5] For him sod-seats the cottage-door adorn; And peeps the far-off spire, his evening bourn! 20 Dear is the forest frowning o'er his head, And dear the velvet green-sward to his tread: [6] Moves there a cloud o'er mid-day's flaming eye? Upward he looks—"and calls it luxury:" [E] Kind Nature's ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... the atmosphere. As daylight widens, successive groups of mottled and rosy-bosomed clouds assemble on the gilded sphere, and, crowned with wreaths of fickle rainbows, spread a mirrored flush over hill, grove, and lake, and every village spire is burnished with ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... down the descent, not far distant from the sea. A little brook, called in the language of the country a frwd, washes its yard-wall on the south. It is a small edifice with no spire, but to the south-west there is a little stone erection rising from the roof, in which hangs a bell—there is a small porch looking to the south. With respect to its interior I can say nothing, the door being locked. It ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... three works of man in the whole world which are higher than the little knob which you see on the cupola surmounting the great dome of St. Peter's. These more lofty buildings are the Great Pyramid of Egypt, the Spire of Strasbourg, and the Tower of Amiens. The highest of these, the pyramid, is, however, only forty-two feet above St. Peter's. The great dome is supported by four pillars, each of ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... Dove came to a brook to drink, When, leaning o'er its crumbling brink, An Ant fell in, and vainly tried, In this, to her, an ocean tide, To reach the land; whereat the Dove, With every living thing in love, Was prompt a spire of grass to throw her, By which the ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... room. And if we have seen just one window we think all are of the same form and are convinced that the inn is a mansion. Or again, we see, half-covered, through the woods, a distant pool, and in memory we then see the possibly, but not necessarily, present river. Or perhaps we see a church spire, and possibly near it the roof of a house rises above the trees; then we are inducted into having seen a village, although there really are visible only the church and ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... up amid the amber mist, That softly wreathes each mountain-spire, The sky its clustered columns kissed, And touched their snow ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... left, down yonder, lies Rouen, that large town with its blue roofs, under its pointed Gothic towers. They are innumerable, delicate or broad, dominated by the spire of the cathedral, and full of bells which sound through the blue air on fine mornings, sending their sweet and distant iron clang to me; their metallic sound which the breeze wafts in my direction, now stronger and now weaker, according as the wind ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... dearest interests are at stake, I also, from habit of mind and duty, must study it as a part of the great campaign of the year. If there are organizers at work there will be signals to-night, and I can see them from a tall neighboring church-spire. Yet how can I leave my ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... Mississippi eastward, and southward to the Gulf, the Tubercled or Small Pale Green Orchis (H. flava) lifts a spire of inconspicuous greenish-yellow flowers, more attractive to the eye of the structural botanist than to the aesthete. It blooms in moist places, as most orchids do, since water with which to manufacture nectar enough to fill their deep spurs ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... Cotswold hills, was actually in Oxfordshire, although by so bare a margin that all the windows looked down into Gloucestershire, except those in the Rectory; they looked out across a flat country of elms and willow-bordered streams to a flashing spire in Northamptonshire reputed to be fifty miles away. It was a high windy place, seeming higher and windier on account of the numbers of pigeons that were always circling round the church tower. There was hardly ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... often used, and had made my way along the edge of the dyke which runs through our meadows into the broad, which we call Breydon Water; and there by the margin of the broad I stood, while the sun was setting behind me, and watched the light flush and fade over the grey spire and high red roofs of Yarmouth town. Many a night I had come there to the same spot and gazed with wistful eyes at that prospect; for though I was, in a manner, familiar with the old town, and had gone in ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... thinking that the next time he came to the station would probably be at the end of term, when his schoolboy days would be over. He leaned against a gate, and looked long at the green quiet hill, with its tall spire and embosoming trees, till ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... their emblem is the fragrant and spotless pond-lily, whose very breath is a blessing to all the region round about. . . . Among the productions of the river's margin, I must not forget the pickerel-weed, which grows just on the edge of the water, and shoots up a long stalk crowned with a blue spire, from among large green leaves. Both the flower and the leaves look well in a vase with pond-lilies, and relieve the unvaried whiteness of the latter; and, being all alike children of the waters, they are perfectly in keeping with ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... smaller cities the presence of this significant landmark is almost invariable. There is ever the lone and lorn tower, belfry, or spire painted in dark sad colours, seen from afar off, rising from the decayed little town below; often of some antique, original shape that pleases, and yet with a gloomy misanthropical air, as of total abandonment. They are rusted and abrased. ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... distinguish our church spire amid the whirling snow; and then a panic seized me. I must get down at some spot where I would not be recognized, for oh, I did not want any one to tell that old stage-driver who I was, and thus bring discredit upon my father, the clergyman, for having ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... anybody else. It was late July, the great heats were gone for the time at least, and they were brisk and elated. They paused a little while in Capitol Square, and looked at the Bell Tower, rising like a spire, from the crest of which alarms were rung, then at the fine structure of St. Paul's Church. They intended to go into the State House now used as the Confederate Capitol, but that must wait until they reported to ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... down, a tornado struck her—now, Maria, what in the thunder are you staring at me in that way for? It was a tornado—a regular cyclone—and it struck her and jammed her against the lightning-rod on the Baptist church-steeple; and there she stuck—stuck on that spire about eight hundred feet up in the air, and looked as if she had come there ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... there has been much natural anxiety to see the new owner, and we are all excited about the event of his coming. Even I am, though I own my own estate, which, though adjacent, is quite apart from Castra Regis.—Here we are now in new ground for you. That is the spire of Salisbury Cathedral, and when we leave that we shall be getting close to the old Roman county, and you will naturally want your eyes. So we shall shortly have to keep our minds on old Mercia. However, you need not be disappointed. ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... the master; "kill him, indeed! Faith, he'd be no common man who could kill him; he has as many lives in him as a cat! Sure, he can live behind a ditch, wid the faver on his back, wid-out dying; and he would live if he was stuck on the spire of ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... of the sun sink behind the western crests, and then the last twilight died into the night. Heavy darkness trailed over the forest, but soon moon and stars sprang out, and the sky became silver, the spire of smoke reappearing across its southern face. But Willet, who was in reality the leader of the little party, gave no sign. Grosvenor knew that they were waiting for the majority of St. Luc's force to go to sleep, leaving ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... pyramid, built of great square stones of fluor spar, straight up; and here are the three little pinnacles of mischievous quartz, which have set themselves, at the same time, on the same foundation; only they lean like the tower of Pisa, and come out obliquely at the side: and here is one great spire of quartz which seems as if it had been meant to stand straight up, a little way off; and then had fallen down against the pyramid base, breaking its pinnacle away. In reality, it has crystallized ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... become exceptional. The plans of Bampton, Burford, and Witney, show how the builders of west Oxfordshire experimented in cruciform planning. The division between chancel and nave is felt much less at Witney than in the other two churches; for the great thirteenth century tower and spire, resting upon massive piers joined by pointed arches, throw a considerable portion of their weight upon nave and transept arcades, whose exceptional massiveness gives unity to the whole design. In the fifteenth century, however, the rebuilders of the aisleless church of Minster Lovell, ...
— The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church • A. Hamilton Thompson
... was shut off from Ilkeston, and enclosed in the small valley bed, which ended in a bushy hill and the village spire of Cossethay. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... "chief master" of the works of the Duomo, then in progress, "with a yearly salary of one hundred gold florins, and the privilege of citizenship." He designed the Campanile, in a more perfect form than that which now exists; for his intended spire, 150 feet in height, never was erected. He, however, modelled the bas-reliefs for the base of the building, and sculptured two of them with his own hand. It was afterwards completed, with the exception of the spire, according to his design; but he only saw its foundations ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... salvation in the present going to pieces. I have always felt this instinctively. It came to me clearly only a few years ago. It is a bad thing to become wholly loosened from the soil, to forget the village church spire. Curiously enough poetry attaches only to objects that have come down to us, that have had long use. What is called progress, a vague and very doubtful term, rouses the lower parts of our intelligence. The higher parts vibrate the better for what has moved and inspired a ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... freshly green, or against evergreens, are more memorable than whole groves will be by-and-by. How beautiful, when a whole tree is like one great scarlet fruit full of ripe juices, every leaf, from lowest limb to topmost spire, all aglow, especially if you look toward the sun! What more remarkable object can there be in the landscape? Visible for miles, too fair to be believed. If such a phenomenon occurred but once, it would be handed down by tradition to posterity, and get into the mythology ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... within the compass of the life-mystery, we cannot hold it at arm's length from us and look at its lines of configuration. Nor of a life can we in any measure determine the success by what we behold of it. It is to us at best but a truncated spire, whose want of completion may be the greater because of the breadth of its base, and its slow taper, indicating the lofty height to which it is intended to aspire. The idea of our own life is more than we can embrace. It is ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... bread Been blest beneath thy murmuring tent, Where many a bright and hoary head Bowed at that awful sacrament. Now all beneath the turf are laid On which they sat, and sang, and prayed. Above that consecrated tree Ascends the tapering spire, that seems To lift the soul up silently To heaven with all its dreams, While in the belfry, deep and low, From his heaved bosom's purple gleams The dove's continuous murmurs flow, A dirge-like song, half bliss, half woe, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... a-top o' the Barn field," said Mary, "and look across Pardons to the next spire. It's directly under. You can't miss it—not if you keep to the footpath. My sister's the telegraphist there. But you're in the three-mile radius, sir. The boy delivers telegrams directly to this ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... almost from its source amid the neighbouring hills, and followed its windings through the leafless forest, until it united its waters to those of the Calder, and swept on in swifter and clearer current, to wash the base of Whalley Abbey. But the watcher's survey did not stop here. Noting the sharp spire of Burnley Church, relieved against the rounded masses of timber constituting Townley Park; as well as the entrance of the gloomy mountain gorge, known as the Grange of Cliviger; his far-reaching gaze ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... place, by the side of the avenue where most of the people were walking, there stood a man, with a tall and gayly-painted can on his back. It was covered with common drapery below; but the top was bright, and towered like a spire above the man's head. There was a round bar, like the leg of a chair, which went from the bottom of the can to the ground, to support it, and take the weight off the man's shoulders when he was standing still. The man was standing still now, and was all the time tinkling a little bell, to call ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott
... to the left was seen afar The whitened spire of sacred name,[17] And ars'nal, where the god of war Has hung ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... Smith. He preceded his assistant, who, it was decided, should join him only on the last afternoon of his stay at Hammerpond. Now the village of Hammerpond is perhaps one of the prettiest little corners in Sussex; many thatched houses still survive, the flint-built church with its tall spire nestling under the down is one of the finest and least restored in the county, and the beech-woods and bracken jungles through which the road runs to the great house are singularly rich in what the vulgar artist and photographer ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... original building. At the eastern end of the north aisle the builder of the manor-house had erected a mausoleum for himself and his family. It was a largish eight-sided building, lighted by a series of oval windows, and it had a domed roof, topped by a kind of pumpkin-shaped object rising into a spire, a form in which Swedish architects greatly delighted. The roof was of copper externally, and was painted black, while the walls, in common with those of the church, were staringly white. To this mausoleum there was no access ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... "'Only listen to that in Charleston streets!' exclaimed Garrison, on hearing the band of one of the black regiments playing the air of 'Old John Brown', and we both broke into tears," relates Rev. Theodore L. Cuyler, who stood by the side of the pioneer that April morning under the spire of St. Michael's church. ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... Chantry.—William Brandon of th'age of —- yeares, was last incumbent there, but not resident, since anno reg. xxvij who sold his interest to Mr Copley for viijli xi s. ij d. {26} At the west end of the building is a large massy tower, lately put into thorough repair, this is surmounted by an octagonal spire, 230 feet in height, and formed of wooden shingles carefully fitted together. The great bell of this church is the largest in the county, and weighs nearly a ton and a half: the whole peal, consisting of eight, is ...
— The History and Antiquities of Horsham • Howard Dudley
... no longer exists. Three hundred thousand of its choicest acres are now held in severalty by the fifteen hundred members of the Sisseton and Wahpeton Band of the Dakotas—the "Leaf Dwellers" of the plains. Their homes, their schools, their churches cover the prairies. That spire pointing heavenward rises from Good Will Church, a commodious, well-furnished edifice, with windows of stained glass. Within its walls, there worship on the Sabbath, scores of dusky Presbyterian Christians. The pastor, the Rev. Charles Crawford, in whose veins there flows the mingled ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... the Hague, almost from time immemorial, has been embowered. The ancient cloisterhouse and church now reconverted to religious uses—was a plain, rather insipid structure of red brick picked out with white stone, presenting three symmetrical gables to the street, with a slender belfry and spire rising ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of Him who is emphatically termed "the God of the fatherless and widow"; and then, his only earthly care being ended, he prepared to meet Death, as those alone can do to whom "to die is gain". When the last beam of the setting sun threw a golden tint around the spire of the little village church those lips which had so often breathed the words of prayer and praise within its sacred walls were mute for ever, and the gentle spirit which animated them had returned to God who ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... sleeping in the moonlight; then between hedges, over which they saw broad wan meadows shrouded in a low-lying mist. They scarcely heeded whither they rode at first, being only anxious to get away, turning once westward when the spire of Chichester cathedral rose suddenly near them out of the dewy night, pale and intricate and high. They rode, speaking little, just a rare word now and then, at a turning, at a footfall, at a roughness ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... to courage firm and high! Health to Granta's chivalry! Wisely finding, day by day, Play in toil, and toil in play. Granta greets them, gliding down On by park and spire and town; Humming mills and golden meadows, Barred with elm and poplar shadows; Giant groves, and learned halls; Holy fanes and pictured walls. Yet she bides not here; around Lies the Muses' sacred ground. Most she lingers, where below Gliding wherries come and go; Stalwart footsteps ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... to make sure that it is a good one. "Marnin!" he says savagely—and turns his back on us, as if we had offended him. A curious product, this, of the growth of civilization. If I didn't see a church spire at Underbridge, I might suppose that we had lost ourselves ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... could never complain of distraction. The church-town—a single street of cottages winding round a knoll of elms which hide the Vicarage and all but the spire of St. Julian's Church—stands high and a mile back from the coast, and looks straight upon the Menawhidden reef, a fringe of toothed rocks lying parallel with the shore and half a mile distant from it. This reef forms a breakwater for a small ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... for we did not like the look of Dan Ryan's high-stepper, who was a 'thrifle mounTAIny,' as they say in these parts, and had a wild eye to boot. We started, and in a half-hour we could still see the chapel spire of the little village we had just left. It was for once a beautiful day, but we felt that we must reach a railway station some time or other, in order to find a place ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... peculiarities, such as are characteristic of the English parish churches or of cathedrals in general; and which render old Trinity quite conspicuous among her American sisters. A fee of twelve cents entitled me to an ascent of its lofty spire, which can be made to the height of 304 (?) ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... foreground of the war-time picture of the church on page 62 may be his. The tablet to his memory has long since been destroyed, and every vestige of his tombstone has disappeared, but nature, not forgetting his generous gifts to the old church, has sent up a spire-shaped cedar to mark his grave. Colonel Hamtramck died April ...
— A Virginia Village • Charles A. Stewart
... seventy-eight years of age, every faculty of head and heart seemed to keep pace with the times. He was a Wesleyan Methodist, and with pleasure told us of the erection of their new Zion, whose glistening tinned spire we could see rising among the ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... returning from the farms And children danced to meet them. From the doors Of cottages there came a pleasant clink Where busy hands laid out the evening meal. From smouldering elms around the village spire There soared and sank the caw of gathering rooks. The faint-flushed clouds were listening to the tale The sea tells to the sunset with one sigh. The last white wistful sea-bird sought for peace, And the last fishing-boat stole o'er the bar, And fragrant grasses, ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... France." Once a Roman camp whose stout masonry walls can still be seen for considerable distances, it had a mediaeval castle, and, until the greater grandeur of Beauvais stole the honor, was a bishopric with a lovely small Gothic cathedral. Its lofty gray spire dominates the green fields and thick woods in the midst of which Senlis sleeps away the modern day. There are other curious and beautiful examples of Gothic building in Senlis: indeed, just here, the experts find the first workings of ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... the leading squadron galloped Colonel de Warrenne, cool, methodical, keeping a distant flag-staff in line with a still more distant church spire, that he might lead the regiment in a perfectly straight line. (Few who have not tried it realize the difficulty of leading a galloping line of men absolutely straight and at true right-angles to the line of ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... open window, and lo! in the evening sky he saw the City Sometime in the Land of Yettocome. All the wondrous castles and palaces were there, marvelous in their beauty, glorious in their splendor, dazzling in their colors of emerald, rose and purple, of ruby, crimson and gold. From spire and dome, cupola and turret, tower and battlement the lights flashed and gleamed, while the Pilgrim looked in wonder and in awe. And high above the city walls, that shone as burnished silver in the sun, rose the temple flaming like a ruby flame—the temple sacred ...
— The Uncrowned King • Harold Bell Wright
... said Gerald, as Anna began collecting vases from the tables in a drawing-room not professionally artistic, but entirely domestic, and full of grace and charm of taste, looking over a suburban garden fresh with budding spring to a church spire. ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... human sentiment. A few hours earlier he had been oppressed by one of the most melancholy moods that had ever afflicted him. Now, as he stood still for a moment, looking through the open window at the stars as they began to shine out above the cathedral spire across the river, he felt as though ten years had passed since he had driven down through the forest. Only the image of Hilda remained, and seemed to drown in light the gloomy forebodings that had so much distressed him. As for Hilda's ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... hoppers of whole corn exposed in the houses. The houses are cleaned twice a year. Little Compton is, indeed, a community where all the rules of the poultry books are regularly violated, and yet a larger number of successful egg farms can be seen from the church spire at Little Compton Corners than most poultry writers have ever seen or read about. Strange it is, as Josh Billings puts it, that "some folks know ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... summer-time I thrust back the curtain to watch the sunrise stealing down a steeple which stands opposite my chamber window. First the weathercock begins to flash; then a fainter lustre gives the spire an airy aspect; next it encroaches on the tower and causes the index of the dial to glisten like gold as it points to the gilded figure of the hour. Now the loftiest window gleams, and now the lower. The carved framework of the portal is marked ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Coventry stands upon a little hill, with old St. Michael's steeple and the spire of Holy Trinity church rising above it against the sky; and as the master-player and the boy came climbing upward from the south, walls, towers, chimneys, and red-tiled roofs were turned to gold by the glow of ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... gentle hearts; before the awful window of Whitehall, whence the martyr Charles had issued, to kneel once more, and then ascend to Heaven;—before Playhouses, Parks, and Palaces, wondrous resorts of wit, pleasure, and splendour;—before Shakspeare's Resting-place under the tall spire which rises by Avon, amidst the sweet Warwickshire pastures;—before Derby, and Falkirk, and Culloden, where the cause of honour and loyalty had fallen, it might be to rise no more:—before all these points of their pilgrimage there was one which the young Virginian brothers held even ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Joe Robertson had been the pilot of Fairport, and was as well known to the frequenters of that harbor as was the tall spire which was the pride of the town. The sound of war had, however, roused within him the spirit of his father of Revolutionary memory. He declared he would not have it said that Joe Robertson was content to play door-keeper to the ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... printed over the door. Willy asked the office-boy if there were any letters, and they went upstairs. The windows of the front room were in view of a church spire, and overlooked a little shadowy cemetery; and at one window Cissy sat, the little crutches by her side, watching the children playing ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... where Ghouls might come With their foul banquets from the tomb And in its caverns feed unseen. Like distant thunder, from below The sound of many torrents came, Too deep for eye or ear to know If 'twere the sea's imprisoned flow, Or floods of ever-restless flame. For each ravine, each rocky spire Of that vast mountain stood on fire;[227] And tho' for ever past the days When God was worshipt in the blaze— That from its lofty altar shone,— Tho' fled the priests, the votaries gone, Still did the mighty flame burn on,[228] ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... sorrow which makes sacred the fountain of tears in authentic tragedy, let them follow, pace by pace, and pang by pang, the humiliation of the fourth Henry at Canossa, and his death in the church he had built to the Virgin at Spire. ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... out fences, poplars, elms, Scotch firs, and spectral houses. But, above, everything was clear. The school-buildings, such as he could see, stood out boldly against a cloudless sky, and above these soared the spire of Harrow Church, pointing an ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... green, Placed close within destruction's scope, Full little was that rustic's hope Their ripening to have seen! And, lo, a hamlet and its fane:- Let not the gazer with disdain Their architecture view; For yonder rude ungraceful shrine, And disproportioned spire, are thine, Immortal WATERLOO! ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... the edge of the fighting zone for months, had been casually shelled each day in normal times, bombarded furiously during every attack or counter-attack. The church, with its spire or tower, had probably been suspected as an artillery observing station by the Germans, and so had drawn a full share of the fire. All that was left of the church itself was one corner of shell-holed walls, and a few roof-beams torn and splintered and stripped ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... the banks. The old smoke-stained storehouses on either side, rose heavy and dull from the dense mass of roofs and gables, and frowned sternly upon water too black to reflect even their lumbering shapes. The tower of old Saint Saviour's Church, and the spire of Saint Magnus, so long the giant-warders of the ancient bridge, were visible in the gloom; but the forest of shipping below bridge, and the thickly scattered spires of churches above, were nearly ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... produced three calves which had on the same side of the head, instead of a horn, a small bony lump attached merely to the skin; but we here approach the doubtful subject of inherited mutilations. A man who is left-handed, and a shell in which the spire turns in the wrong direction, are departures from the normal though a symmetrical condition, and they are well known to ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... the end of my spine, by concentrating them in admiration upon the scene. There was the Sphinx welcoming us with an immense smile of benevolence, as suitable to the sunshine as had been her mysterious solemnity to the moonlight. There, far away to the left, the spire-crowned Citadel floated in translucent azure. Its domes and minarets, and the long serrated line of the Mokattam Hills were carved against the sky in the yellow-rose of pink topaz. Shafts of light gave to jagged shapes and terraces of rock on the ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... give it this sombre hue, but in reality the waters are clear as crystal. Beyond these groves, still looking south, you discover the woods about Wardour Castle, and amongst them the silvery gleam of another sheet of water. To the south-west is the giant spire of Salisbury, which since the fall of Fonthill Tower now reigns in solitary stateliness over these vast regions of down and desert. Stourton Tower presents itself to the north, whilst to the west, in the extreme distance, several high hills are traced ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... resolved to give effect to the essential part of the Frankfort agreement. He summoned a meeting at Spire 'for the purpose of so arranging matters that the wearisome dissension in religion might be reconciled in a Christian manner.' In consequence of a pestilence which appeared at Spire, the assembly was removed to Hagenau. Here it was actually held ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... Phoebus up the East. Then, when his limbs from slumber were released, And he had eaten of his frugal fare, He stemmed the stream, and up a hillside bare Of aught but tangled bush and hindering briar Toiled slowly to the crest, whereon a spire Of splintered pine like lonely sentry stood. Below him lay a wide-outreaching wood, And far beyond a hamlet that he knew, Oenoe called. Before the thick night dew Had dried from off the grass and ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... hour, in a shaded recess of the suburb of Charlestown, stood a strongly-built and keen-eyed man, with his hand on the bridle of an impatiently waiting horse, his eyes fixed on a distant spire that rose like a shadow through the gloom of the night. Paul Revere was the name of this expectant patriot. He had just before crossed the Charles River in a small boat, rowing needfully through the darkness, for his route lay under the guns of a British man-of-war, the "Somerset," on whose deck, ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... manner of graceful and beautiful forms. They make bunches of flowers, from flakes and wires of silver, that counterfeit the delicate creations the frost weaves upon a windowpane; and we were shown a miniature silver temple whose fluted columns, whose Corinthian capitals and rich entablatures, whose spire, statues, bells, and ornate lavishness of sculpture were wrought in polished silver, and with such matchless art that every detail was a fascinating study and the finished edifice a wonder ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the diving Negro seek For gems hid in some forlorn creek, We all Pearls scorn, Save what the dewy morne Congeals upon each little spire of grasse, Which careless Shepherds beat down as they passe, And Gold ne're here appears Save ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... historic memories; they will jostle us in the market-place, and in the principal streets they will be seen rushing about as if 'on change,' or hurrying to 'catch the train for Paris,' like the rest of the world. A few only have eyes of love and admiration for the noble spire of the church of St. Pierre, which rises above the old houses and the market-place, with even a grander effect than any that the artist has been able to render in the illustration. 'St. Pierre, St. Pierre,' are the first and last words we heard of Caen; the first ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn |
